Is there a way to change the view clipping distance in the Assembly Room?

MarkIsSleepy

Hi all,

I've been playing around a lot lately with landscapes and keep running into the same issue: when I move a large terrain a realistic distance away it gets clipped out of the view and the only way to see it is to do a test render.  I see a setting for the near clipping plane in the camera settings but nothing for the far clipping plane.  Is this hard-coded or is there some way to change it?

I am working at a medium scene size because I need to manipulate human-sized things in the foreground and don't want them jumping a hundred meters with every touch of the mouse but changing to a large scene size doesn't make any difference but I really need to see where that far mountain range is for composition purposes.

Thanks for any help!

Mark

Dartanbeck

I think the near-clipping plane adjustment is there to assist in paralax shots (?)

As for camera clipping, I don't think it does. To experiment, I just put a cube into an empty scene and sent it 20 miles away on the y axis. It got too small to see, so I just set the primitive size larger and... yup... there it is - clear as it would be if it was a tiny cube right next to me.

I think what we experience in your situation is either haze or fog via the Realistic Sky. I'll look in that next ;)

Dartanbeck

Oh... right. Atmosphere!

There's a setting in the Realistic Sky Editor that allows us to change the atmosphere settings: Default is 1 mi = 1 mi

I think that if you were to change that to 1 mile = 0.10 mile, you'll see the change you're looking for. But I'll check just to test it.

Dartanbeck

Aha! Just as I was expecting!

Here is the same cube, 20 miles away, the primitive size in the General panel set to 5000 ft., so I elevated it 2500 feet so it wasn't sunk in the virtual ground (I know I could have adjusted the ground elevation... )

In this first image, I have the RSE atmosphere set at 1 mile = 10 miles, and the cube disappears

In this one, I have the RSE atmosphere set to 1 mile = 0.10 miles... the cube reappears! ;)

In the RSE, the little round icons along the left, the top one, Atmosphere must be selected. I forgot to highlight that in the screen shot :(

The area of that panel within the red highlight - it's the two little white boxes below Global Brightness. I suppose it might be just as easy to make the first box 10, for 10 miles = 1 mile in Carrara... 

Dartanbeck

I never really cared about this adjustment before. I don't even think I noticed it until they made God Rays available in the next little round icon down, Fog and Sunbeams.

They say that sun beams show best if the atmosphere is set to be thicker, like 1 mile = 3 or 4 miles... or even 10.

For more fun with God Rays, try Tim Payne's fun  God Rays Example Scene at Carrara Cafe

Dartanbeck

Although I think it's really cool that they added them, to me they're a bit too difficult to set up compared to just doing it in post in say, Howler, HitFilm, or Fusion, for example.

But It's really neat how powerful Carrara's Realistic Sky Editor can be! There are quite a few negative comments throughout history regarding the cloud layers created via RSE. I think they're wonderful clouds - especially if we take the time to tweak them nicely. 

I am known for always using the Fog feature, which really enhances the problem that brought on this thread - it hides the background toward the ground dramatically the further away from the camera we put things! And I'm often just using a density of around 10 - 12 and an altitude of around 12 (default is 50 - watch out, it'll block a LOT of your background!!!). 

MarkIsSleepy

Dart - I'm not talking about it disappearing in the render - it's a gigantic mountain range that shows up fine in the render.  I mean that in the Assembly room viewport, if I move an object a certain distance back it disappears from view and can't be seen through the camera view.  But when I render it is plainly visible (in fact it takes up 3/4ths of the screen just as I intended).

WendyLuvsCatz

Magnitude fixes that but you end up with a very touchy camera

FifthElement

Nope, not doable, I asked for this (and for a full adjustment of director's camera) when Carrara vas in Version 5 & 6, lol, nobody really cares 

de3an

The "Distance to near plane" camera preference has an affect on the far plane also. Making the setting larger will allow you to see further into the distance, but will then not allow you to move in as close to near objects. Each scene magnitude (small, medium, and large) has a different default setting, which you can then change to suit your needs. If you can't find a good compromise setting for both near and far, you could insert a second camera with a different "Distance to near plane" setting, and switch between them as needed.

I don't think you can change the "Distance to near plane" setting for the Director's Camera.

MarkIsSleepy

Thanks everyone.  I guess I'll just live with it then. 

I guess it's a relatively small annoyance.

 

Dartanbeck

MDO2010 said:

Thanks everyone.  I guess I'll just live with it then. 

I guess it's a relatively small annoyance.

 

Yeah... that issue pesters me quite often. I mostly just use my Directors cam to get back or roll around so that I can make sure it's (the item being hidden in view) placed right.