Walkabout view control.

[Paul Jackson]

I'm getting to grips with Nxt after using AR3 & 4. A lot of my work is architectural photo montage which was quite easy to match perspective with photos in AR3 & 4 as they had precise  'controls' to make tiny adjustments when in the Walkabout view. Does Nxt have such controls? I've tried setting up model in AR4 and using that view in Nxt, but distance seems not right. Any help appreciated.

 

[Paul Jackson]

Think i may have answered my own question. Using the Increment slider and the arrow keys! Any other advice or tips appreciated.

 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

You've got the idea.  I need to write a wiki article about WalkAbout motion controls so we have something for people to find....

[Paul Jackson]

Don't know if they're still there in Nxt, but in AR4 you had  'Pick Walkabout Perspective' and a 'Lens' box as well as the FOV. Are they within Nxt anywhere? I can look on AR4 to see for example a 28mm lens gives a FOV of 65.470, but cannot then put in such a precise figure on Nxt. The Lens dialog box came in handy to match my DSLR lens setting.

[Ros. Riha]

set the lens in the autocad and import the view into nXt

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

No lenses anymore-- here's my conversion if you want (I'll investigate adding some more precision to the control):

 

FOV(Degrees) = (arctan(18 / LENS(mm)) * 2.) * 180 / PI.

 

No picking points-- use an AutoCAD camera instead.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ian Foster Griffith]

Hello,  trying to pass from AR4 to AR5 and finding increase time required on tasks which where very easy in AR4. Am I doing something wrong.

 

Have setup a named view by using the "AutoCAD camera" and followed it into NXT but...........renders fine.

"AutoCAD camera"

The inputs are three nodes in the view, (camera, middle,target,  along with the blue arrows) move these nodes and the camera preview changes then you save named view. Then to see if this has work you then load up the view in nxt having little to no control over the view. Is this right or have I missed something.

Is this what you are talking about, and this has replaced the AR4 walkthough controls right?

So questions

1. What are these (Increment slider and the arrow keys)? Where can I find them and are they like AR4 controls after you have setup the "AutoCAD camera" view.

2. How do I frame a image using "AutoCAD camera" in say like a 10x8 photo shot. I can select and change paper size in ar5 walkabout. But there is no control over the view. Can the "AutoCAD camera" be set to limits like a photo size. The limits seem to be the vport size which changes all the time.

3. AR4 controls you could move in and out along the line of sight and still keep a shot size. Does "AutoCAD camera" have this feature. There was no need to do any image editing after render because the ar4 controls.

4. There seems to be a dance from "AutoCAD camera" to "nxt walkabout" saving the view back and forth. Is this right is this what poeple are doing to NXT.

5. In the AR4 controls you could move around and when the material got changed and colour on the model would change. Is this gone as well.

6. Is it to hard to put the AR4 controls into the "nxt walkabout box", at the end of the day I used this view to show clients there model and help me design on the go. Not having this feature is a big turn off and stopping from producing work in NXT.

7. This is a major problem for me, on one hand the 64bit processing is great advance but on the other hand with on average 25 shot per project and 3 to 4 fly round it's going to chew up time. Or have I got something wrong.

 

Please help me understand.

Ian

 

 

 

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

WalkAbout in nXt works more closely with AutoCAD named views-- basically it attaches some extra data to these views.  You can use the AutoCAD camera utility to create these views-- but you don't have to.  Most people find the AutoCAD cameras convenient as a departure point.

By default, the resolution is set to the total number of pixels and the frame will vary with the viewport aspect ratio.  If you don't like this, change the resolution in WalkAbout from Viewport to one of the fixed-aspect options.  Print size and DPI is one of these.  Save the view back to AutoCAD using the WalkAbout toolbar once you like it-- it will retain that aspect ratio from then on when you load it into WalkAbout.

You can use the WalkAbout tools to move around.  If you don't like the mouse interface, you can use the arrow keys on your keyboard for more precise movement.  They function very similar to the old arrow buttons.  The Increment slider lets you control the amount of movement.  Again, once you're happy, you can save the view.

 

[Sampdoria]

Hi Roy, is there anyway to tweak more precisely something like the "Field of View" - For example, I am trying to tweak from 13 to 14 but it jumps from 13 to 15! Since Im working on a macro view, its

become quite tedious. Are there any keyboard assignments for the FOV?

 

cheers

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

I need to change that control-- it's on the list.  In the meantime you can always try to use AutoCAD.  Probably the easiest way is to promote the view back to AutoCAD with the WalkAbout button and use dview.  If the precise aspect ratio is important you can open up a paperspace viewport that's the correct shape.

[Peter Milner]

I hardly ever use the AutoCAD camera. I find the Walkabout view quick and easy and very intuitive. It's just like walking round your model with a camera and taking the pictures you want.

When you find a shot you like, save it and move on to another one.

Use the resolution pixels to set the proportions and quality of the final image (1754 x 1240 = A4 at 150dpi).

[Ros. Riha]

It depends on the style you use it - as we often have to match a view to photograph etc. we found it more convenient to use 3D Walk in AutoCad and then import the view into nXt...but all of this is highly personal.

Where we would very much appreciate an advice is the following:

• We often render a named view in small resolution for testing purposes, then in "almost" final resolution to see fine details and then in the final resolution. Best way to handle this in Walkabout seems to be the use of "Print" button to set the aspect ratio and then to change "Density" to achieve small resolution rendering of the same proportions. This works well.
• But once we would like to run an overnight batch, there is no way how to increase/decrease the resolution globally - you have either to readjust the resolution of each image directly in the batch dialog box, or to re-save all your views with changed resolution. 
• We do not know of any other way and both of the above seem rather cumbersome (imagine to have to set up a batch, consisting of 20+ images...)

 

Any advice, please?

[Ian Foster Griffith]

Ok getting a grip now, I can see how things work. Thanks for the reply.

Understand the Increment slider and the arrow keys now.

Checked this out too and made things clear with autocad camera.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxAFu4C-fvw&feature=related

Will go away now and play with this, thanks Roy.

Looking forward to starting a project in NXT.