Animating an out-of-body transition

[vr_boyko]

greetings!

I would like to construct an animation that swings the viewport around to look at the avatar representing the person who is looking through the viewport while moving away to a pre-determined position external position, a sort of an out-of-body experience. Currently I am trying to achieve this by using the commands:
<viewpoint>.goto(x,y,z,vel)
and
<viewpoint>.lookat(x,y,z)

my actual code looks like this:

def outofmymind(): # animate a smooth POV transition
global myAvatar
myApos = myAvatar.get(viz.POSITION)
myPOV = viz.get(viz.MAIN_VIEWPOINT)
myPOV.lookat(myApos)
myPOV.goto(5,5,5,.85) #just an arbitrary external place


however, instead of going to (5,5,5) in about 2 seconds while looking at myAvatar, the viewport just sinks down (-y)

any comments on my (apparently wrong) code and any suggestions for improvement are very appreciated.

Thanks!

btw, what formatting do you use especially for code, and how do I access it from "post new thread" webpage (is it in enhanced mode?)

[farshizzo]

Hi,

Take a look at the <viewpoint>.gotomode and <viewpoint>.pivot commands. Also, there is an example script in the [Vizard20]/examples/advanced directory called animateview.py which shows how to use these functions.

Basically what you would want to do is something like the following:

def outofmymind(): # animate a smooth POV transition
	myApos = myAvatar.get(viz.POSITION) 
	myPOV = viz.get(viz.MAIN_VIEWPOINT) 
	myPOV.gotomode(viz.BLEND_ROTATE) #Also try out 	viz.PIVOT_ROTATE, see which one you like better
	myPOV.pivot(myApos) 
	myPOV.goto(5,5,5,.85) #just an arbitrary external place

To format some text as code you can press the button with the "#" symbol or you can manually add the following tags around it: [ code ]some code[ /code ]

[vr_boyko]

I found that the BLEND_ROTATE feels more natural, as much as an out-of-body experience can feel natural.

thanks again!