Animated Focal Length?

[artmanphil]

Hey Community!
Right now I am working on a space combat scene. And since I like Galactica so much, I'd like to make some zooming back and forth, with refocussing etc. Am I right that there's no "zoom" option in the softimage camera? So I decided to animate the focal length in the "projection plane" tab of the camera ppg.

Looks like I intended in the viewport, but during testrendering tonight it didn't recognize the animation at all.
Is this a bug or math my tiny human brain can't cover Aaaand is there a better way to zoom without moving the camera?
Any suggestions?

P.S.: Maybe I should mention I'm working on si2013 and SItoA 3

[SpookyMunky]

hmm, shouldn't you be animating the field of view angle on cameras instead of focal length ?.. its how I would animate heavy zooming in and out realistically, never tried it before though !

FOV angle in my mind acts similar to how real world cameras would when you zoom in and out.. if you are going for delayed dof blur then maybe animating focal length and f-stop etc will work combined with FOV ?. personally Id do that post tho, really no idea since Iv not tried (and am sadly not a cameraman), sounds fun tho.. grumble

Edit : there used to be a real world camera setup kinda addon.. might be http://francoislord.com/XSITools/index.html cant remember.. if it is the right one I have no idea how to use it hehe.. in my mind it added a camera rig with f-stop / focal length controller, dependant on the real world cam you selected. Wish I could be more help, rray.de search for camera or something if this isnt one the right thing .. again tho it should be the fov you are animating imho.

[artmanphil]

yep, basically same thing both parameters since they are dependant, but especially arnold hates focal length keyframes