Copyright: Vue d'Esprit Mover 2 Electronic Documentation ©1998 e-on software, inc.


General overview
Overview of Vue d'Esprit Mover 2

Welcome to Vue d'Esprit Mover 2.

Vue d'Esprit Mover 2 is a camera animation plug-in that adds animation potentiality to Vue d'Esprit 2. It will enable you to easily generate spectacular flythroughs of your favorite scenes. With Mover 2, e-on software has chosen to handle camera animation completely, rather than make incomplete attempts at animating everything.  The result is an easy to use plug-in capable of producing broadcast quality animations in a few clicks. Animations are designed in the usual way, using keyframes that are interpolated using splines. All camera aspects may be animated, including depth of field, which could lead to impressive results: imagine a shot of a majestic canyon that

slowly focuses on a butterfly sitting in front of the camera...

But that's not where Mover 2 gets its real power: it's more in the realism of camera motion, achieved using a set of elaborate "mechanically correct" algorithms.

Using Mover, you get to select a vehicle (airplane, helicopter, motorbike, automobile, and more...). Depending on the selected vehicle, the camera will behave differently, banking as it turns (with airplanes) or pointing downward to accelerate (helicopter)! You don't have to fuss about with camera orientation any longer: Mover 2 will look after it automatically, if you wish...

A powerful Animation Wizard will guide you as you set-up your animation. Using the wizard, the path followed by the camera can be plotted in top (satellite) view. The wizard then ensures that the path followed by the camera doesn't hit anything (flying cameras), or that it follows the ground.

All this lets you set-up realistic animations in seconds. All aspects of the animation may be touched-up manually, but the sequences produced by Mover 2 are sufficient in most cases.

Mover 2 provides a unique set of powerful tools to touch up the animation defined using the Wizard, while automatically retaining smooth motion. Among these is the incredible ability to automatically reorganize the keyframes to ensure that camera motion is made at a constant velocity! To our knowledge, this is yet another unique feature of the software!

Rendering is done using motion-blurring to produce broadcast quality results. Export format is AVI or a set of pictures (one per frame).

Rendering may be stopped any time and resumed later. This is done without having to process parts of the animation that have already been processed. So you can do this without any loss of time!

Check out the official Vue d'Esprit site on the Internet at the following URL:

http://www.e-onsoftware.com

You'll find new vegetations, pictures, landscapes, materials... to download, plus hints and tips on getting better pictures.

Don’t forget to download the new vegetations that are readily available (some for free!).

We are very keen on seeing what you do with our software, so don't forget to send your personal creations, and of course, comments and suggestions.


Time Line

The Time line panel is used to fine tune animations produced by the Mover Wizard.

It displays a ruler in its central area. This ruler is graduated in seconds, and is used to position events in time.

To the left of the ruler is a set of buttons that let you navigate inside the animation. The Play button plays a wireframe preview of the animation. The Stop button stops the animation. The Fast Forward and Reverse buttons will move the current time to the next keyframe (resp. previous). The buttons at both ends of the set will either move current time to the Beginning or to the End of the animation sequence (depicted in yellow, see ruler section below).

Under this set of controls you will find a button that Unfolds this panel to a more detailed version. This displays keyframes for each independent setting of the camera (position, orientation, focal...). It is useful whenever you want to gain precise control over one particular setting, without affecting the other settings.

Alongside this Unfold button is a box that indicates the Current time. The format is current time in hours, minutes and seconds, followed by the number of the frame inside that second (hr:mn:sec - frame). You can enter the current time directly.

To the left of the ruler is a pair of buttons that respectively display the Animation Options dialog and the Render Animation dialog.

The Ruler

On this ruler, you can see a large inverted triangular handle, a solid bar with a yellow inset, and smaller triangular handles.

The large triangular handle depicts Current time. The current time is the time at which the scene is currently displayed in the wireframe views. You can modify current time by clicking on the handle and dragging it to the left or to the right, or by double-clicking on the requested time. The wireframe views will change appropriately, to display the scene at the new time.

The Solid bar depicts the total duration of the animation, starting a time origin 0, and ending at the last keyframe. The Yellow inset depicts the sequence inside the animation that will be played when you ask for a wireframe preview of the animation using the Play button (see below). The start and end of this sequence can be modified by clicking on the End handles and dragging them to the right or to the left. If you move the current time after the end of the solid bar, the camera settings will be the same as at the last keyframe.

The small triangular handles depict the time at which Keyframes occur. A keyframe is an event that forces one or several camera settings to a given value, thus forcing the scene to look like it does. Mover automatically interpolates all settings in between keyframes to generate smoothly varying values and realistic motion.

Whenever you move, rotate, or change the focal and blur settings of the camera, a new keyframe is automatically added at the current time. This means that the scene will be exactly as it is whatever happens before or after. If you change the time at which the keyframe occurs, you will force the scene to be as it is at a different time.

You can move the ruler to the left or to the right to see another part of it by pressing the right mouse button and moving the mouse (the same can be achieved by pressing Space and using the left mouse button).

Press Control as you drag to zoom in or out of the ruler (this increases / reduces the time lapse displayed at a time by the ruler). Or press Control and Plus or Minus to achieve the same result.

The selected keyframe is displayed in a darker shade. Press Delete to destroy the selected keyframe.

Popup Menu

Press the right mouse button over the ruler to bring up a popup menu that offers menu commands for all the aforementioned actions.


Animation Options

The animation options dialog gives you direct access to all the settings proposed by the Mover Wizard.

Use the Selected vehicle drop-down list to select another vehicle. The characteristics of the different vehicles are as follows:

Airplane	The camera flies above the ground, banking moderately as it turns.
Helicopter	The camera flies above the ground, banking slightly as it turns, and dipping down to gather speed.
Missile	The camera flies above the ground, rapidly banking as it enters a turn.
Direction	The camera always looks in the same direction, whatever the direction of travel.
Automobile	The camera follows the surface of the ground. Its orientation is given by that of the ground.
Motorbike	The camera follows the surface of the ground, banking as it turns, and looking up when accelerating. The bike eventually lifts on its rear wheel as acceleration gets strong enough.
Pedestrian	The camera follows the surface of the ground. It always looks straight ahead.
Speedboat	The camera follows the surface of the water. It banks slightly as the boat turns. When accelerating, the camera looks up as the boat accelerates.
Vehicles fall under two categories: airborne vehicles that fly above the ground, and grounded vehicles that stick to the ground. The Vehicle Options dialog lets you further customize the behavior of the various vehicles.

Under the Selected vehicle drop-down list you will find a set of options that let you decide on the animation Repeat mode. If you select Loop animation, Mover will add a segment of path to take the camera back to its initial position at the end of the sequence, thus ensuring a smoothly looping animation. If you select Play pendular animation, the camera will turn around at the end of the sequence, and travel in the opposite direction.

The Make constant velocity motion and Make ease-in ease-out motion are two rare and extremely powerful features of Mover. They will automatically reposition the keyframes inside your animation to ensure that the camera travels at a constant velocity (resp. accelerates progressively on the first half of the animation, then slows down to a halt) over the path you have defined. They are the guarantee that you will always obtain smoothly varying motion in your animations.

The Frames per second box lets you enter the number of frames that will be generated by Mover for each second that your animation lasts. The higher the figure, the smoother the animation will play (but also the longer it will take to render and the larger the resulting file will be). Since human eye cannot see more than 24 frames per second, there is usually no point in going over that figure. If you want to render a preview of your animation, select a low frame rate (such as 5 fps).

The Animation length box lets you enter a new value for the total duration of your animation. Mover will automatically reposition all keyframes to make sure that the animation lasts exactly the time you indicate.

The Look ahead option is another powerful feature of Mover: it automatically modifies the orientation of the camera so that the camera always looks in the direction in which it is traveling. And best of all, you can change the orientation of the camera relative to the direction of travel (e.g. to make an airplane that always looks down at the ground).

The Persistent camera path option keeps the path followed by the camera visible in the wireframe views even when the camera is not selected.

Finally, the Mover Wizard button displays the Mover Wizard.


Render Animation

This dialog displays the settings used by the render engine when rendering all the independent frames of the animation.

The Preset render quality is identical to that of the standard Render Options dialog. A new preset has appeared, named Broadcast. This is a very high quality setting that implements smooth motion blurring.

Motion blur simulates what happens when a real camera shoots moving objects: the diaphragm of the camera must stay open long enough so that a sufficient amount of light reaches the film. And while the diaphragm is open, the objects keep moving, resulting in a blurred picture on the film.

Motion blur is an advanced feature that results in perfectly smooth animations. It is available from Final render preset upwards, but renders really nicely at Broadcast preset render quality, or better.

In the Preset render quality group, press Edit to display the complete Render Options dialog.

Indicate the resolution of the frames using the Frame resolution group. 320 pixels wide is usually a good enough resolution, and, unless you are producing animations for a movie, 640 pixels wide should be the biggest resolution you select. Remember that if you double the resolution of a picture, you multiply by 4 the number of pixels it contains, and thus multiply by 4 the total render time. Besides, few Personal Computers can yet display 640 pixel wide animations in perfect fluidity...

Use the Animation file box to indicate the name of the file that will be generated by Mover. You can use the Browse button to pick an existing file.

Supported animation file formats are AVI (Windows Audio Video Interleaved), or a set of pictures under BMP, Gif, Jpeg or Targa file formats. Generating the animation as a set of independent frames is ideal if you need to composite the animation using another package. This is because you avoid the picture quality loss due to the AVI compression. It does however require lots of available disk space. Each frame in the animation is generated with a unique name in the form of PictureName_ssss_ff where PictureName is the name of the file that you indicated in the Animation file box, ssss is the number of the second in the animation, and ff is the number of the frame inside the second.

To change the animation file format, just type in the new extension, or use the Browse button and select the desired file format from the file format drop-down list.

Use the Options button to display file format options (depending on the file format you selected). If the file is an AVI file, a standard Windows dialog will pop-up, letting you select the desired compressor and compression options. If the file format is a picture format, the standard Picture options dialog will appear.

Use the Frame rate group to select the number of frames that will be generated for each second that the animation lasts. The higher the figure, the smoother the animation will play (but also the longer it will take to render and the larger the resulting file will be). Since human eye cannot see more than 24 frames per second, there is usually no point in going over that figure. If you want to render a preview of your animation, select a low frame rate (such as 5 fps).

Finally, use the Animation limits group to select whether the whole of the animation should be rendered (choose Render complete animation), or if only part of the animation should be rendered (choose Render sequence). If you only render part of the animation, you will have to indicate the upper and lower limits of the sequence that you want to render. You can indicate these limits as time limits, or as frame number limits (if you indicate the limits as a Start frame and End frame number, the corresponding time limits will be modified accordingly. The same occurs if you enter Start time and End time).

If you stopped rendering an animation, and would like to restart where you stopped, press the Resume rendering animation button. This button is enabled only if you select an animation file that was stopped before rendering ended. Please note that rendering is resumed at the exact point where it stopped, and, as a result, no time is lost if you stop rendering the animation, and then restart later on!


Vehicle Options

This dialog lets you customize the dynamic behavior of the Mover vehicles. Depending on the type of vehicle that you have selected, the camera will automatically bank as it enters a turn, and/or automatically dip or raise as it accelerates.

You can use the controls in this dialog to adjust the sensitivity of the camera to these dynamic movements.

Since the reactions of the camera are guided by real dynamics, the sensitivity is dependent on the scale of your scene: if the scene has been constructed at a small scale, the distance traveled by the camera during the animation will be small, and so will its speed. As a result, the camera won’t roll much as it turns. Adjusting the sensitivity can restore the desired amount of roll. The same applies to acceleration. You can judge the scale of the scene by comparing it to the size of the camera; if the camera looks ridiculously large, then the scene has been constructed at a tiny scale (as if the camera were observing tiny bugs), and you will probably have to

Use the Roll sensitivity controls to adjust the reactions of the camera as it enters a turn. This works as a gain, so a value of 1 won’t modify the sensitivity, a value of 0.5 will halve the sensitivity, and a value of 2 will double it.

Use the Acceleration sensitivity controls to adjust the reactions of the camera as it accelerates. This also works as a gain, so a value of 1 won’t modify the sensitivity, a value of 0.5 will halve the sensitivity, and a value of 2 will double it.

Using the slider, you can halve or double the sensitivity of the camera. Using the edit boxes, you can go over this range.

If the vehicle you have selected is not subject to Roll sensitivity, or to Acceleration sensitivity, the corresponding controls will be disabled.


Keyboard and Menu Shortcuts

The following is a list of all the keyboard shortcuts added by Mover:

In the wireframe views:

Press F11 to display the time line panel

Press Control + F11 to display the Mover Wizard

Select Delete keyframe from the wireframe popup menu to delete the keyframe that was under the mouse cursor

In the Time line panel:

Press Control and Plus to zoom into the time ruler (reduce the time lapse covered by the ruler)

Press Control and Minus to zoom out of the time ruler (increase the time lapse covered by the ruler)

Press Page Up and Page Down to move the current time to the next (resp. previous) keyframe

Press Home or End to move the current time to the beginning (resp. the end) of the animation sequence)

Press Delete to delete the selected keyframe

In the Mover Wizard:

When plotting the desired camera path:

Press Control as you click on a waypoint to modify the position of the waypoint

Press Insert when the mouse cursor is over the camera path to add a new waypoint at the position of the cursor

Press Delete when the mouse cursor is over a waypoint to delete the waypoint.

Drag with the right mouse button to move the view around

Press the Space bar and drag with the left mouse button to move the view around

Press Control and Plus to zoom into the view

Press Control and Minus to zoom out of the view

Press Control and drag with the right mouse button to zoom in or out of the view


Keyframe

A keyframe is a frame of an animation at which one or several settings have been defined. That setting will always remain as you fixed it, whatever happens before or after the keyframe. An animation is usually constructed by defining a set of keyframes that are interpolated to produce smooth motion in between the keyframes.

In Mover, as soon as you modify one of the settings of the camera, a new keyframe is added to the animation.


Motion Blur

Motion blur simulates what happens when a real camera shoots moving objects: the diaphragm of the camera must stay open long enough so that a sufficient amount of light reaches the film. And while the diaphragm is open, the objects keep moving, resulting in a blurred picture on the film.

Motion blur is an advanced feature that results in perfectly smooth animations. It is available from Final render preset upwards, but really renders nicely at Broadcast preset render quality, or better.