Importing into MicroStation

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‌Importing into MicroStation

1. Open your existing 3-D DGN file. Or, create a new one, typically based on seed3d.dgn

2. Open the MicroStation Animation Producer from Utilities/Render/Animation

3. File/Import .MSA the .msa file written by the SynthEyes exporter.

4. Set the View Size correctly—this is required to get a correct camera match.

a. Settings/Rendering/View Size

b. Select the correct view # (typically 2)

c. Turn off Proportional Resize

d. Set X and Y sizes as follows. Multiply the height(Y) of your image, in pixels, by the aspect ratio (usually 4:3 for standard video or 16:9 for HD) to get the width(X) value. For example, if your source images are 720x480 with a 4:3 aspect ratio, the width is 480*4/3 = 640, so set the image size to X=640 and Y=480, either directly on the panel or using the “Standard” drop-down menu. This process prevents horizontal (aspect-ratio) distortion in your image.

e. Hit Apply

f. Turn Proportional Resize back on

g. Close the view size tool

5. On the View Attributes panel, turn on the Background checkbox.

6. Bring up the Animation toolbar (Tools/Visualization/Animation) and select the Animation Preview tool. You can dock it at the bottom of MicroStation if you like.

7. If you scrub the current time on the Animation Preview, you’ll move through your shot imagery, with synchronized camera motion. Unless you have some 3-D objects in the scene, you won’t really be able to see the camera motion, however.

8. If desired, use the Tools/3-D Main/3-D Primitives toolbar to create some test objects (as you probably did in SynthEyes).

9. To see the camera cone of the camera imported from SynthEyes, bring up Tools/Visualization/Rendering, and select the Define Camera tool. Select the view with the SynthEyes camera track as the active view in the Define Camera tool, and turn on the Display View Cone checkbox.

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