Hi folks

New user here so be gentle!

Please take a look at the short Youtube vid linked below.

In it i have a 120 frame long comp.

I hit play, then move my camera via my mouse to perform the camera movement i want.

Is there a way to record (animate) such a movement in Houdini?

Obviously i can also do the movement step by step by moving the playhead, creating a keyframe, moving my camera, rinse and repeat etc.

But doing it in the “live” manner i'm asking about would give me quicker, more organic results, albeit necessitating a clean up of the movement splines after as it might be a bit jittery.

Thanks in advance!

Set Export View Continuously under the Cam1 menu, set a keyframe on the camera, and press play. All movements in the viewport are now recorded.

Great, many thanks, will give that a try!

And just one more quickie: Is it also possible to just drag the camera in the viewer and record (animate) the movement, without having to first tell Houdini which parameters you're going to animate?

Because if, for example, i do this in the top view, there are 5 parameters that change as i do the drag, which is quite a chore to first set each a keyframe for.

I was kinda hoping there would just be like a “record” button like in a DAW!

@Goat, i never actually got this to work.

So:

1) Set Export View Continuously under the Cam1 menu
2) set a keyframe on the camera, and press play.

When i do those steps and press play, i'm no longer able to pan around my scene, the camera position seems to be locked. Once i stop play, i can pan again.

Perhaps i'm misunderstanding what you mean by “set a keyframe on the camera”. I think you just mean alt + click on the camera parameter you want to animate, right?

A few days ago i saw a setting (but i don't remember where in Houdini) that said something like: “dynamically update parameters in realtime during play”. perhaps that setting has a bearing on it?

Auto-key also needs to be enabled.

I can't imagine this is a viable way to work though.

Many thanks, Jsmack, that fixes it!

The resulting animation is pretty jerky, but the important thing for me is it captures the general animation curve i want.

Then i can go into the animation editor and delete all the frames in between the start / end points. But the fantastic thing is that after you delete them, you still see their (jerky) curve faintly in the background, so it's easy to draw in a couple of new points and adjust the splines to achieve the same shape of animation you had (in between), but this time it's smooth.

Houdini amazes me yet again!

you said: “I can't imagine this is a viable way to work though”.

Do you see some potential pitfalls with this way of working, or are there other workflows that'll achieve the same thing more easily?

Dazzer123
you said: “I can't imagine this is a viable way to work though”.

Do you see some potential pitfalls with this way of working, or are there other workflows that'll achieve the same thing more easily?

I mean I tried it, and I couldn't get anything resembling a directed motion. The frames fly by at 24 or 30 fps and the range starts over again before you can tell what you've done. Tumbling in the viewer is not a very good way to describe a camera motion.

Ah, ok!

I'm doing quite slow camera or object movements, so i guess for that it's useful!

This technique is actually kind of awesome with my favorite new toy, The Mighty Space Mouse.

This, unfortunately, does not seem to work with the new first-person navigation mode.