virtual director camera positioning? try partiview!

A simple way to check the behavior of camera viewpoints in virtual director is to use the desktop graphical software partiview, which accepts the same 3-D data formats and the same camera-position notation. You can check your own examples.

Two binaries for partiview is included (partiview.linux and partiview.macos). Or, you can download and compile the source from CVS).

You might start with:

• copy the appropriate binary to be named just "partiview".
• run "./partiview jack.speck" or "./partiview wintergreen.speck".
• Drag in the graphics window with the left mouse button to rotate about the current center (crosshair), or right button (or Option-drag) to zoom forward and backward. CTRL-drag rotates about the camera (pan around the sky).

• Press the <TAB> key to move focus to the gray command box - or just click in the text box.

• type "jump" in the command box to print out the current viewpoint in virdir/partiview .wf format - six numbers for camera position and rotation.
• type "jump" followed by six numbers (px py pz rx ry rz) to look from that viewpoint
• type "snapshot filename.png" to take a snapshot of the current view
• type "fovy NNN" to set the vertical field-of-view to NNN degrees. (Default fovy is about 18 degrees.)

• type "rdata filename.wf" or press the "Path..." button to load an existing animation path file in .wf format
• type "frame 1", "frame 2", etc. or click the arrow keys to step between camera viewpoints on the .wf path