When you are finished with your design,
you can share it with others using virtual walkthroughs.
It is easier than ever to create a walkthrough in Chief Architect.
With your plan open in floor plan view,
go to the 3D drop-down menu and down to walkthroughs to create a
walkthrough path. Now you are in line drawing mode.
I'm going to click where I want to start my walkthrough and drag a line to the
first place I want to turn.
Then click and drag a line from that point to the next and then to the next.
You are drawing a spline which is a multi curved line.
Once you have drawn the spline, or your path for your walkthrough,
you can select the line and use the edit handles to make adjustments to the
spline where you want. Once you have the path drawn,
you will notice that it places what is called key frames at each end of the
path. With the path selected,
click on the open object tool to open the walkthrough path specification dialog.
Here, you can make changes to how the walkthrough will be recorded.
You can see the key frames listed here and settings for each of them,
including the floor it's placed on, the speed after this frame,
the angle and tilt of the camera, as well as the height.
You can also change the resolution of the video to be recorded,
as well as the duration, or the number of frames per second.
The frames per second will determine the smoothness of the video as it records.
We'll get deeper into that in a few minutes.
You also have settings for the camera that is being used for the walkthrough
here in the camera panel on the right.
You can select the rendering technique for the camera, show color,
use watermark, show shadows and reflections,
and other camera settings as well.
There are also settings for the lights used in the plan that control the number
of lights turned on in the view.
I usually have several lights in my rooms, so I'll set this to 20.
You can change the backdrop in your camera view here, or remove it altogether.
I'll click OK to close this dialog. Now with my walkthrough path still selected,
I will click on the walkthrough preview tool here in the edit toolbar at the
bottom of my screen.
This dialog allows you to edit and preview the walkthrough repeatedly without
having to record it each time to see the effects of the changes.
You can make changes to each key frame in this dialog as well.
If you don't see the key frame settings,
right-click on this dialog and click on key frame settings.
You can also view them horizontally or vertically.
If you want to dock this dialog on the side of your screen,
just click and drag the top of the dialog box over to the middle right side of
your monitor until you see the blue space open up,
then release your pick button. Once it's docked,
when you close it and reopen it, it will remain docked where you put it.
Now you can work either in the dialog or here in the plan view without closing it.
In this dialog,
you can select any walkthrough path you have created by clicking on the
drop-down. Here, you can see that I only have the one.
Select one,
then click on define. That will open the walkthrough path specification dialog
that we had opened before. Again, you can make changes to the key frames,
camera, backdrop, et cetera. Here,
I will go to the camera panel and click on show shadows,
ray casted sun shadows, and click on reflections.
We'll leave the backdrop as it is as well as the other settings in the
walkthrough path specification,
and click OK to return to the walkthrough preview dialog.
Now you'll notice that the shadows and reflections are not showing up in the
preview pane, but they will show up in the recording.
If you want to see them in the preview pane, click on this button,
the use recording quality in preview.
But note that this will slow down the process so I'm going to leave this off.
In this dialog,
you can preview the walkthrough by clicking on play walkthrough preview from beginning.
Now I'm going to add some key frames to my walkthrough.
With the walkthrough path selected,
I will click on add key frame here in the edit toolbar at the bottom.
Then click on the path where I want to add the key frame.
Additional key frames will allow you to manipulate the camera as you walk
through the room.
I'll add one here and another one here close to that one.
And then another one here. If you
have one where you don't want it, you can click and drag to move it,
or click on the delete key frame tool to remove it altogether.
With my new key frames,
I want to turn key frame number three so that I'm looking at the living room.
And then this one will turn back.
This one at the end I want to turn and look into the kitchen.
Now with the key frames where I want them,
and with the key frame path still selected,
I will click on play the walkthrough from the beginning to see how that looks.
That is making that turn really quickly,
so I can slow it down by changing the speed after here in the walkthrough
preview. Now I want to see only that small segment,
so I will move the green slide bar here,
where I want to start the preview and click on play walkthrough preview from current frame.
That makes that turn much smoother.
You can stop the preview anytime by clicking on the red button here.
You can record a shorter segment of the video by moving the yellow slide bar on
each end to where you want to start and stop.
You can click on the black forward and back arrows to move through the
walkthrough one frame at a time.
Or click on the jump two arrows to move from key frame to key frame.
You also have the option to create a camera view from a current preview pane
by clicking on this button that will open a separate camera view with all of the
current camera settings.
Another thing I want to do is have the key frame number four
tilt up to look at the tray ceiling.
So I will change the tilt angle to 15 degrees.
You can also use the move camera with mouse tool here in the preview pane by
selecting a key frame,
then move your mouse to the preview window and rotate or tilt the camera.
Notice that that changed my tilt angle to 19 degrees.
I'll play the video again from the current frame.
This camera will start the turn here at key frame two,
then turn back again after key frame three,
then tilt up as it moves towards frame four,
then tilt back down and turn to look into the kitchen.
When I'm happy with the preview, I can click here on record walkthrough.
In the record walkthrough options dialog,
you can set how you want your recording to look.
I'll record the walkthrough and I'll keep the settings as they are now,
then click OK to start the recording.
It will ask you where you want to save the file, and you will name it here.
The recordings are saved in .wmv files.
This is a very common windows media video file.
Once it starts recording, you can watch the progress. As you can see,
the recording time is pretty fast.
But when I play the video, you can see that it is really jumpy.
That's because of the really low frames per second.
And it's a bit blurry because of the compression rate.
So we'll click again on the record walkthrough button and make some changes.
We'll set the resolution for the screen size you want.
I'll change this to 1920 by 1080.
Now I'll set the compression rate to 25%.
And the frames per second higher to 30 frames per second.
This will affect the smoothness of the video. Now this recording,
with the settings I have, will take about 15 minutes.
To perfect your walkthrough videos, you can make changes to the lighting,
sun angles, material properties,
and use different render techniques for different effects.
Walkthrough videos are a great way to share your designs with friends or clients.