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Bricks in Motion
Bricks in Motion
We are a friendly filmmaking community devoted to the art of stop-motion animation using LEGO® and similar construction toys. Here, you can share your work, join our community of other brickfilmers, and participate in periodic animation contests!
A place to discuss, share, and create stop motion films.
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Forums - Bricks in Motion » Equipment & Software » Anyone tried or build Motion Control with Mindstorms?
I don't know...but that would be a great way of doing specific computer controlled panning and dollying.
Nah,mindstorms are expensive,but i might get some on the future.
CDP
Good idea! 
That would be a very easy way to make smoothe camera motion. 
I've tried to make some basic camera rigs with technic and I found it very difficult to get accurate small increments with Lego gears. I'd imagine the same is true with Mindstorms.
It could just be that my Technic skills are lacking though.
I've tried to make some basic camera rigs with technic and I found it very difficult to get accurate small increments with Lego gears. I'd imagine the same is true with Mindstorms.
It could just be that my Technic skills are lacking though.
Hmmm.. I think it can be done well. Although don't blame me, I'm optimistic . I haven't touched Lego technics for years and have practically no more lego left.
Maybe I should try making some rig designs with LDD that I have on my mind, so one can try them to build and see if they will work.
I built a wench to move in accurate small increments with LEGO, it took a while, but it's pretty cool. It can be done, just need to be very careful. I plan on using it for slow mo shots, moving figs slowly then masking.
I imagine you'd be able to build something of the same sort to move a camera powered by mind stormers.
But it would probably be better to just crank a knob on the machine rather than have something electric power it, I don't think it would be really necessary.
But the whole point of motion control rigs is that you need to be able to repeat the exact same movements over and over, so you can film the camera moving through the background, then film foreground elements separately. Hand cranking isn't going to give you that level of control.
I believe chosen1 from Brickfilms.com made a Mindstorms camera rig. He posted some pictures a few years ago, but I guess they're offline now.
But the whole point of motion control rigs is that you need to be able to repeat the exact same movements over and over, so you can film the camera moving through the background, then film foreground elements separately. Hand cranking isn't going to give you that level of control.
Hand cranking can. I've built my thing as so a 360 turn of the knob moves the thing at the exact same movement every time. It works pretty smoothly. Just need to turn the handle thingy once every frame and it's perfect.
Got any pictures?
I made a topic for it.
Pictures of the contraption, and a video of it working there.
It actually is a little bit bumpy there, though, I've improved it even more since then, adding more gears, and fixed it so that the movements would be even more smooth. Back then I did a quarter turn every frame, now I do a full turn.
I'm sure after a few days, one could come up with an interesting camera rig which uses gears similarly.
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