I use this class to help me record demos without having the jerky movement of a manually moved camera; the animation smooths out my motion making a more professional looking video. --Sinbad

To use this class, just include it in your project, and call init(viewport, camera) and setEnabled(true) to turn it on. You will need to call processUnbufferedKeyboard and update every frame. When enabled, you can start & stop recording the camera by pressing Insert, and toggle playback using Return. The brackets change the interval between the keyframes that are created in record mode, and the playback speed in playback mode. You can also place keyframes manually with the Space key.

It's currently limited to just one animation and there are no editing features built in, it's purely one-shot recording & playback. Feel free to extend it to full Final Cut Pro status if you want 😊

Prerequisites

This class was made using the 'old' overlays, so you need to grab OgreCore.zip from here:
http://ogre.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/ogre/branches/v1-6/Samples/Media/packs/OgreCore.zip

Add this to resources[_d].cfg:

Zip=../../media/packs/OgreCore.zip

Usage

camCorder = new CamcorderHelper();
camCorder->init(vp, mCamera);
camCorder->setEnabled(true);

camCorder->processUnbufferedKeyboard(mKeyboard, evt.timeSinceLastFrame);
camCorder->update(evt.timeSinceLastFrame);

Code

Loading and Saving animations using the AnimationSerializer

The AnimationSerializer was made to be able to save and load recorded camera animations, and it requires only two small changes to the CamcorderHelper class.

Camcorder modifications

Add these two lines to Camcorder.h:

const Animation* getAnimation() const {return mCurrentAnimation; }
void setAnimation(Animation* anim);

The definition of CamcorderHelper::setAnimation:

void CamcorderHelper::setAnimation(Animation* anim)
{
    if(mCurrentAnimation)
        mCurrentAnimation->destroyAllTracks();
    mCurrentAnimation = anim;
    mCurrentTrack = anim->getNodeTrack(0);
    mCurrentAnimation->setInterpolationMode(mInterpolationMode);
    mCurrentAnimation->setRotationInterpolationMode(mRotationInterpolationMode);
    mCurrentTrack->setUseShortestRotationPath(false);
}

Loading and saving animations

AnimationSerializer animSerializer;
animSerializer.exportAnimation(camCorder->getAnimation(), "cam.anim");

AnimationSerializer animSerializer;
camCorder->setAnimation(animSerializer.importAnimation("cam.anim"));

To get a more accurate recording you can lower the frame frequency:

camCorder->setKeyFrameFrequency(0.1f);

Warning!
The serializer needs to be fixed so that it saves the animation file in the resource group manager search paths.
Right now it saves the file in the current working directory, and loads it from the resource directories..
So in order to load a saved animation, you need to move the saved animation to a resource directory.
This notice will be removed once that issue is fixed.