• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Advanced camera control

  Posted by David Gudelius on March 20, 2008 at 6:08 pm

  Hi,
  I’ve got a very difficult problem to solve. In fact, difficult for me.

  What it’s about:
  I want to control a 3D camera by a null-layer.
  If I rotate the null-layer, the camera should rotate, too… but around it’s origin camera target, with the z-distance I want to control, too.

  The effect: If I rotate the null-layer by 90 degrees in y-axis, the camera has to move in x-axis and z-axis, as it “rotates” around its camera target.

  Could you please please help me out?
  I’m getting really mad already!!!

  Thank you very much in advance!!!

  David Gudelius replied 18 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Darby Edelen

  March 20, 2008 at 7:30 pm

  This can be done without any expressions at all.

  After you parent your camera to the 3D null make sure that the camera’s Point of Interest value is [0,0,0] (so it looks at the Null) and the camera’s Position value is [0,0,-z] where ‘z’ is how far away you want your camera to be from the Null (the radius of the rotation).

  So for example a camera position of [0,0,-900] would place the camera 900 units away from the Null, if you rotated the Null on the Y axis the camera would rotate in a circle with a radius of 900 units around the Null.

  Darby Edelen
  Designer
  Left Coast Digital
  Santa Cruz, CA
• 

  David Gudelius

  March 20, 2008 at 7:51 pm

  Oh god,

  how f*ckin dumb can anyone be?
  I hided the “parenting”-buttons in my GUI, so I didn’t get an idea of what might be useful or worth tryin…

  thank you very, very much, and mea culpa.
  You saved my eastern.

  Oh my god.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up