[0.23.5] KerbCam v0.13 (camera pathing tool for videos)

[huin]

"Feature/priorities wishlist - where should I spend my (limited) time next on KerbCam?"

Please make a Flyby cam,like in IL2 Sturmovik

I'll have to press you for specifics... How does that differ from what is possible with a path at the moment?

[postman]

Pretty sure that's my fault, and I suspected this bug, but there was a bigger more common bug I wanted to fix in the last release, so I didn't delay it.

In Unity3d (and therefore KSP) there is a hierarchy of objects, with transformations tracking child/parent relationship. One thing that KerbCam does when changing the camera to be relative-to an object is reparent the flight camera to that object. If that object gets destroyed, I believe it destroys all of its descendents (children, children of children, etc.) - thus destroying the flight camera - which has a number of wonky effects.

I was attempting to test for this prior to the last release, but couldn't quite figure out which event hook to attach to, and what was to happen then.

(One could argue it as being a KSP bug, but I think that would be unfair, as I'm moving objects around in a way that breaks their assumptions about how objects interact)

One question I'd have to users of KerbCam is: what should be the correct behaviour of the camera when the object it is tracking is destroyed?

My initial answer would be to pin the camera in place relative to where the object was last, at the instant when it is destroyed. Thoughts?

Oh ok, it makes sense why it happens, I suspected as much. It kind of goes against my philosophy in coding that you should ever leave anything to chance just because you don't plan on doing that particular thing. Any host of bugs could cause an item to disappear in KSP, and what would become of the camera is the same as I've seen.

As for what happens, I think that the camera should switch back to the active vessel just as it was before the camera was switched to the destroyed object. Perhaps the camera could wait by the destroyed object for a second or two (as it does when you slam your rocket into the ground before bringing up the end mission menu). Just my thought on the topic though.

[huin]

Oh ok, it makes sense why it happens, I suspected as much. It kind of goes against my philosophy in coding that you should ever leave anything to chance just because you don't plan on doing that particular thing. Any host of bugs could cause an item to disappear in KSP, and what would become of the camera is the same as I've seen.

As for what happens, I think that the camera should switch back to the active vessel just as it was before the camera was switched to the destroyed object. Perhaps the camera could wait by the destroyed object for a second or two (as it does when you slam your rocket into the ground before bringing up the end mission menu). Just my thought on the topic though.

The bug itself should be fixed - for now I've taken the easy option of just switching back to the active vessel when the relative-to vessel is destroyed. Thanks for the report!

[Grim187]

awesome plugin, makes things a lot easier.

was just wondering if there is a trick to smooth rails, i keep getting loops.

[Elliptical Orbit]

Don’t suppose we could get a feature to lock the camera in a stationary position and have it follow an object with out moving with it?

[Grim187]

awesome plugin, makes things a lot easier.

was just wondering if there is a trick to smooth rails, i keep getting loops.

Yes, just add a key 0.01 seconds before your key in the same place.

also if you want to stop there for a while you can add another key after, just make sure to add another one 0.01 seconds after it.

to the people that just realized i answered my own question, i also made a 10 minute tutorial that is very bad;

I still don't know what timescale dose.

@huin; the logo i made, if you want to use it; http://www./download/q8p97vj15i1d0qp/KerbcamLogo.png

Edited August 31, 2013 by Grim187

[alacrity]

Future abilities....

Being able to bind a camera to parts of the ship other than then the cockpit.

Fixed camera mount that doesn't move with anything (I can't seem to find the fixed cam mod, but would prefer an all in one mod anyway)

Ability to auto progress through a series of paths (ie top level is called a movement, that is a series of paths, that are in turn a series of keys)

Thanx for the great Cam mod... I plan to beat the snot out of it for the next few days, and I will post any problems or successes

Alacrity

[huin]

Chrome seems to be having issues with quoted replies, so here's a reply/update without quoting (yay):

TL;DR: I'm not sure when I'll next do any major updates to KerbCam.

@Elliptical Orbit & @alacrity: Yes, I've had similar ideas to those and would love for them to get implemented.

I occasionally work up the courage to hack on the codebase some more, but each time I do, I run into several mental blocks on how best to progressively change it towards something more flexible that would serve more general use-cases (that and I have several real-life things to interrupt me). I'm beginning to wonder if a rewrite is in order, but I'm not sure if I have the time or inclination to undertake that effort. My previous efforts at fixing/feature-adding to KerbCam have often taken many times longer than I anticipated, owing to a combination of factors, such as:

• Meddling with KSP's internals in ways that they are not suited to be meddled with (i.e messing with the cameras) often leads to subtle and hard to reproduce bugs.
  
• Lack of documentation on KSP's APIs is a pain, but understandable. Failing that I could use an up-to-date version of the public/protected class metadata for searching across.
  
• Debugging the mod is difficult, in that stack traces don't contain line numbers, and I have been unable to attach a debugger to the KSP process at anything other than a assembly-language level (i.e not a Mono/.NET level). (I can imagine that even if this were possible, the KSP developers wouldn't be too happy about the internals being reverse-engineered to that degree - which would be fair)
  
• Due to a lack of debugger, the only other alternative is to introduce logging statements to attempt to discover more about a problem, which means recompiling the mod. To introduce a newly compiled version of the mod means a complete KSP restart, which takes upwards of a minute or two to get back to a testable position. This gets frustrating.
  
• I suck at coding in C# (this is the only codebase that I work on that is in C# or .NET).
  
• I also suck at making GUIs. (you may have noticed)
  
• The coding part of my brain is often exhausted from work-related coding and other occasional minor side-projects.
  

If anyone knows ways to overcome some of the above, please let me know!

So the current status is that I'm not sure if/when I can see myself doing anything other than making KerbCam work with KSP updates (which is itself by no means a sure thing). I would *love* to implement many features and get rid of some bugs, but I feel the need to explain why I've so far been failing to do so - I've been feeling guilty at taking this long to progress any further.

I love the videos that I've seen made with this mod, and I would love to take steps to make even more things possible. Right now: I don't have the energy. Sorry about that

[brett6781]

no idea why, but everytime I hit play, it instead sends me into an IVA mode and looks at the locations I set the camera keys from inside the cockpit rather than following the drawn lines.

[KnutG]

Hm.. I tryed to use this mod on a IVA view, but the camera make no moves there (I would make a 360° image from the PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container). It is possible to use the camera on IVA´s? Maybe in the future?

[huin]

no idea why, but everytime I hit play, it instead sends me into an IVA mode and looks at the locations I set the camera keys from inside the cockpit rather than following the drawn lines.

I can't even begin to imagine why it would switch camera view mode :/

Can you come up with an exact sequence of steps that reproduces this?

Edited September 17, 2013 by huin

[huin]

Hm.. I tryed to use this mod on a IVA view, but the camera make no moves there (I would make a 360° image from the PPD-10 Hitchhiker Storage Container). It is possible to use the camera on IVA´s? Maybe in the future?

It's the top-requested feature on the poll on this thread. That's where I ran into my pain points listed above in trying to implement it.

Possible: yes. Probably not in the near future, as I'm taking a break from working on this mod, as it's been such a massive time sink.

Edited September 17, 2013 by huin

[KnutG]

Probably not in the near future, as I'm taking a break from working on this mod, as it's been such a massive time sink.

I understand you - nevertheless, I am looking forward to see it in the mod

[keanukeno21]

Is Kerbcam works on 0.22?

[huin]

Is Kerbcam works on 0.22?

I don't *know* that there's anything that would have broken it in 0.22 - but I haven't tested it, I'm afraid, and no time this weekend to test it. But let me know if you run into any problems.

[keanukeno21]

I don't *know* that there's anything that would have broken it in 0.22 - but I haven't tested it, I'm afraid, and no time this weekend to test it. But let me know if you run into any problems.

it works on 0.22, doesn't seems have any problems

[huin]

it works on 0.22, doesn't seems have any problems

Excellent, thanks! I'll bump the thread title.

[Camacha]

I find it hard to believe that such a beautiful mod gets to little attention.

[Nahim]

I find it hard to believe that such a beautiful mod gets to little attention.

Are you serious?

I love what guys like Nassault630 done with this piece of work.

[huin]

Are you serious?

I love what guys like Nassault630 done with this piece of work.

So do I

[Superfluous J]

I don't see a download link anywhere on the first post. I found the download by Googling it and going to SpacePort.

[huin]

I don't see a download link anywhere on the first post. I found the download by Googling it and going to SpacePort.

There isn't a direct download link from the first post. I've drawn more attention to the first link in the post, which links to the Spaceport page for it (it possibly wasn't as clear as it could be what that link was).

[RoboRay]

It took forever, but I finally finished my movie. Thank you for providing the camera dolly, even if I didn't make as good use of it as I would have preferred!

All I could ask for would be camera control in the IVA.

[yeliabmit]

RoboRay, that's a really good film! Very inspiring!

[flixid]

Thank you for this awesome plugin! I love making cinematic videos in KSP and if it weren't for Kerbcam, it would've been almost impossible for me to get all the desired camera angles.

There's one thing that I would like to address though. I'm not sure if this is a bug related to the plugin but sometimes when I go into the camera's viewpoint and hit the spacebar to launch a part heavy (200+ parts) craft from the pad, the craft actually launches and flies upwards but in the camera's view, the craft is still there sitting idling on the pad and I have to exit from the camera's view to actually see the craft flying.

Also, it would be nice if the camera had a telescopic zoom feature.

Anyways thanks once again. Here's a work of mine made recently.