Sims 2 Camera Movement
From Sims99Wiki
Originally written by limbo for the Sims99 Articles Resources
Camera Movement Seen in: Everyday by limbo
I've had a few questions about how I achieved some of the slow moving camera shoots as well as angular movements.
We'll start with Camera movement as it's the easier of the two to explain.
The movement itself really only consists of holding down two directional arrows and q or e (depending on your needs)while filming. Now, this proccess can be further reffined by knowing exactly where you want the camera to end up.
My method is to set the camera in it's final position, save the camera position, then run the movement backwards to see where it will start. If the start position of the shot is not satisfactory simply recall the saved camera position, tweak the angle and or position and repeat the process. Once the start and end positions of the shot are good, save the camera position at the start of the shot, hit play and film away!
Now about camera speed....
To do this you'll need to change a Camera file in your EA/Sims2/Cameras folder. First of all before you change anything, back these files up somewhere else. I crashed the game several times while playing with this stuff so it's good to be able to bring it all back to normal.
I also suggest reading the documentation that Maxis provided (which can also be found in that folder) as to what the various camera parameters do.
That being said there are two cameras inside of one text file (FirstPersonCameras.txt) that you are most likely to use (I am currently not at my PC but I beleave they are Cameraman and CameramanNH). The parameter that effects the speed of the camera the most is maxVelocity, however some of the others (TransationSteps for example) do effect speed as well.
A few other things you can do with this text file includes changing the max and min camera height as well as upper and lower pitch limits, so it is to your directoral benefit to read the docs and play with the values often.
The annoying thing about changing camera speed is that you must exit and restart each time you want to change a parameter so it can be time consuming. (If anyone knows how to add camera files and switch to them from within the game please share!)
