point_viewcontrol movement tracking.

[hugepedlar]

I'm trying to do some machinima and it's all working magnificently, except that I want to have greater control over the camera movements and angles.

I've got the point_viewcontrol set up to point at various characters and continue looking at them as they move around, but I'm having trouble getting the point_viewcontrol itself to move around the map. I can parent it to a character so it moves with him, but it always follows from the same relative position so sometimes it'll be pointing at his back for example. Does anyone know how to have the point_viewcontrol rotate with the character so it's always in front of him?

What I'd really like to do is attach the point_viewcontrol to a train or something so I can specify a path for it to follow. I've managed to set up a train and get it to follow a path, but I can't get the point_viewcontrol to work with it. All that seems to happen is the point_viewcontrol stays at the start of the path and points at the ceiling. More or less the same thing happens when I don't use a train and try to get the point_viewcontrol to follow the path directly. Can anyone tell me how to get this to work? It seems like it should be so simple.

At the moment I've had to make do with saving several different versions of my map with different point_viewcontrol positions in each. While this just about works satisfactorily, it's not ideal, and all my camera positions are fixed.

I've looked for various tutorials, but none of them address this specific problem. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[hugepedlar]

*cough*bump*cough*

 

[Mess]

Have you parented the camera to the train?

 

[Fender357]

Have you considered not using the point_viewcontrole anymore? What about making your scenes as a Demo in hl2? There are some neat things you can do with it now. Take a read.... http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/general/demo_tools.html

It seems like there is a bit of a learning curve to it, but it seems worth it.

 

[Rof]

Rather than parenting the point_viewcontrol to a tracktrain, the entity can follow it's own set of path_corners, just like a tracktrain will, using its "path corner" property.

 

[hugepedlar]

Thanks for the input guys.

Yeah, I parented the camera to the train. Didn't work. And I did eventually manage to get the camera to follow the path on its own, after a fashion, but although it heads in the general direction of the path nodes, it never seems to actually reach each node: If I set the path corners up in a closed square shape, the camera describes a much smaller square within it, if you see what I mean.

I have actually played with the demo camera tools this afternoon. It's not what I'd call particularly user-friendly, but I managed to create some splines for the camera to follow quite successfully - the only significant problem is that it's quite hard to get the camera movements to sync up to in-game events: when you play back your new camera path, the demo playback itself stays paused. Hopefully they'll make some improvements to the demo playback tools soon, because this does seem like the most appropriate solution.

I think I'll end up using a combination of demo tools and point_viewcontrol scenes and cut them together in post-production. If I get anything worth releasing, I'll post a link to some videos somewhere here.

Thanks again, guys.

 

[Raeven0]

The point_viewcontrol seems to me a rushed and generally inadequate entity. Not that I haven't come to expect that, but...