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Managing 3D Comp Changes
Hi everyone,
I’ve been doing many projects in AE that require 3D camera moves with animating elements in a defined 3D space, and every time I have to make a change to the speed of the camera I cringe because of all the retimes I’ll have to make to my carefully positioned and timed elements. I keep thinking that there has to be an easier way to manage these compositions.
Is there a simpler solution I’m missing, or is this just the cross to bear for a digital animator?
Any advice is appreciated!
Justin Skotarczyk
Designer/VFX Artist
Mosa
Royal Oak, MI -
2 Replies
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A few tricks:
– some people use a new parented null for each subsequent move, so you always have two keyframes that define the start and end of a certain segment of a complex move. So you wind up with an entire nested tree of a lot of Nulls. I think this was the method described in the first Creative Cow magazine
– Decide at the beginning if you want to ditch the auto-orient property. I usually do, it often makes more sense to think about moving the camera, and then panning.
If you do need auto-orient towards point of interest, pick-whip the point of interest to a 3D-Null you animate separately– My preferred way of animating a camera (and many other motions) is using straight lines (linear interpolation), and hard keyframes (no easing), then add a smooth() expression to cut corners and handle transitions in speed. The problem with easing is that if you go from point a to point b, it speeds up all the way untill it’s in the middle, than starts slowing down till we’re at the destination.
IMO that’s just not natural for more than a zippy graphics animation reveal. If you’re driving from a to b, you reach our velocity after a few minutes, then it keeps constant, until you start to slow down just before you need to stop. smooth does this, although it does cut corners and overshoots the keyframe stiming wise, but try it ou and see if you like it
smooth(0.5,25);
this will smooth your animation by .5 seconds: so a sudden change will actual take .5 seconds.– if the camera move’s path is ok, but you need to alter the timing, just moving keyframes can actually alter the path if there’s a lot of bezier stuff going on.So you should do a sort of ‘time-remapping’ on all the properties:
add a slider called ‘tempo’ to a Null, and start by setting a keyframe 0 at 0, and a keyframe 60 at 60 seconds (or the end of the comp, you get what I mean)Then in all your animated properties add the expression:
t=thisComp.layer("Null").effect("tempo").slider.value; // pickwhip this to your slider
valueAtTime(t);
now by changing just a few keyframes you can alter the timing of the camera move, everything fro just a global speed-up to bullet-time back and forward.
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Filip,
Thanks for the advice, I’m definitely going to try that smooth expression! Keyframing using easy ease keyframes has been driving me nuts.
Much obliged!
Justin Skotarczyk
Designer/VFX Artist
Mosa
Royal Oak, MI
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