My computer crashed again this week. My wife bought me a new one and I got back to work on “The Barrier”. The camera orientation conversion from Xtranormal to Blender still has me stymied.
New Computer
Our computer finally packed it in this week. We got a new one Tuesday and I started to reinstall my programs. By weeks end I had most of the old programs set up again. It is a Windows 8 machine, and I found it a bit tricky to understand at first. I have a better handle on it now.
I had a big scare when I couldn’t install Premiere Pro. I thought that the version I had might not work under Win 8, but it turned out there was a conflict with a program already installed on the computer. After I fixed that it worked just fine. If I had to buy a newer version, it would have cost me $1,000!
“The Barrier”
With all the computer problems over the last week, I didn’t get much done on “The Barrier” this week. Mostly I worked on creating some background images for the open house scenes.
I have most of the set for the transportation plan open house built in Blender now. I still have to add some set decoration; wall posters mainly. I had a bit of a struggle with the lighting. I kept getting too much, or two little. I think I have it the way I want it now. I am a bit concerned that the set isn’t big enough and may expand it somewhat to make the room look bigger.
The biggest snag I have is with the camera settings. I think I have the co-ordinate conversion right now, but given the other problems, maybe that isn’t the case.
At first I couldn’t adjust the camera focal length, but stumbled into how to do it this week. I think I have that worked out now, although, until I have all the problems resolved, I can’t be sure about that yet.
The main issue now is the orientation parameters. The system Xtranormal uses has 4 co-ordinates and at first I thought that Blender only used three. I did some experimentation and thought I could just multiply three of the parameters to give degrees, but that didn’t produce what I expected.
I found that Blender also has a orientation system called quaternions, which I never heard of before. It has four parameters. When I transfer those, it comes closer to what I want, but is still off a bit. I’m kind of stuck for now. One idea I plan to try is to change the way I convert the co-ordinates. If I can’t find a way to convert soon, I may just try to eyeball the images.
I suspect that someone else has worked out the conversions before, but I’m not sure how I can find them.
Note: You can watch version 0.6 of “The Barrier” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATcKnFAwlU0 I hope to have a final version done some day.
