Spot Tracking

Are you just looking for a more interesting transition between two FP or are you trying to live track an actor or object on the stage?

Live track actor on a marked path (The Yellow Brick Road!). The actor is singing which generally puts their steps at the right place at the right time.

While technically not designed to accomplish this, I have successfully managed to use A3d to work as a poor man's followspot before, and follow the actor across a stage so we can preserve human nuance of performance.

Hm! Yes. My A3D skills, despite a few hours work are not too good. But I will try this.

I was hoping to find say, and absolute fx to move the P/T values. Om not too worried about actors. I tell them to "walk the spot". Actually, when singing they tend to walk the same speed and path most of the time.

I usually just create a series of auto follow cues with intermediate spots that roughly define the path you want the light (and actor) to follow.  More cues mean fine control of the path...

I'm thinking this would be the simplest way, Thak you.

I was holding off on my answer above in case someone popped in and showed us a better way to do it...

You can use Blender to animate SEM position/orientation now via the Alva Sorcerer add-on. So you just keyframe it and use the graph editor to smoothen it if needed. Right this second it doesn't consider Blender's curve modifiers, but that will be pushed to GitHub by end of day.

You can do this with Blender paths and animation now via Alva Sorcerer.

Here's the far better way to do it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWP3AvWi_tQ

Basically, you can just do it with Blender now if you want.

jordanhenshaw said:

but that will be pushed to GitHub by end of day

Done.

Reply to all: Thank you. Blender and Alva Sorcerer totally new to me. Hence some reading to do.

I quickly made a demo of this, using no 3rd party software, just A3D, an SEM, and some focus palettes.

The broad strokes -- I had my rig in A3D, and my yellow brick road drawn out.

I made an SEM (Channel 11) and nested an A3D person object in it (from the library).

I recorded two focus palettes, the start point and end point of where the yellow brick road started and ended and recorded channel 11 in it.

I made one focus palette (FP 11) that contained my six overhead units (CH 1-6) and linked it to SEM 11. With SEM focus palettes or presets, be mindful of what data you record, if you need a Z offset, I would selectively record just the A3D Z height from the fixtures into the profile, so as to not have the fixtures have an X/Y offset.

In cue 1, channel 11 is at its start (FP1), channels 1-6 are at full in FP 11 (the tracking focus palette).

In cue 2, channel 11 is at the end point (FP2), channels 1-6 are unchanged.

Add cues/focus palettes if the path is non linear, but this shouldn't take much time at all to set up and with a well-calibrated A3D model, it works great.

Let me know if you need any additional info, I'm happy to share a more in-depth video of setting it up.

The cues in action: https://youtu.be/9THK20NdLqI

File: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ppvknd5mmx4k4spgf81on/Yellow-Brick-Road-Demo-2024-09-29-13-57-39.esf3d?rlkey=9xkkl64j8b5lfuxgjhmtio2g9&dl=0

The first I heard of SEM (Scenic Element Movable) was two days ago!

Is this inside EOS or do I need to install something? 

I tried to look at the file you appended but my computer won't open it. I'm heading to Youtube for a SEM tutorial. I need to start with baby steps. One point: I notice in your demo the track was linear as the guy walked in a straight line. My original post was to find if there was a way to create a curved path.