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3D Camera Movement
I have been having some serious problems (I’m sure just because I am missing some obvious step or something), but I need help with the movement of my Camera through my 3D composition.
Here’s the setup:
I make a solid, 200 x 200, and label it “position.” Then, above that, I put in one called “Swivel.” Above that, “Tilt.” Above that, “Distance.” Then I have my camera on top of all that. I parent the camera to the “distance” layer, and the distance layer to the “tilt” layer, then that to the “swivel” layer, and that to the “position layer.” After that, I take it a step further… for the camera movement, I create another solid, above the camera, and add three expression controls… a slider, and two angle controls. I parent that to the camera. After that, I create an expression for the “swivel” layer for the Y rotation, which makes it controlable by the first angle control in the expression controls. Then, I create one for “tilt” on the X Rotation, making it controlable by the second angle control in the expression controls. Finally, I make an expression for scale in the “distance” layer, which controls the scale by the slider control in the expression controls. My logic is this, (and maybe this is where I have gone wrong) Position = Point of Interest, Swivel = Y rotation of camera, Tilt = X rotation of camera, and distance = distance from point of interest.
Sounds good… then I try to fly around with the camera…
It turns out that my point of interest is NOWHERE where I want it, and everytime I adjust anything, particularly the “distance” slider, my point of interest changes drastically. I have figured out how to get it to work fine if I am flying along a plane on the z-axis of the composition, not moving in any circular motion. The problem comes from when I want to fly around an object, circle around, etc. etc.
What do I need to do to keep my point of interest moving with my camera so that it doesn’t get screwed up? I’ve tried animating the position keyframes, but it ends up creating more of a mess than I started with. Is there any way of parenting/writing an expression to solve this? What have you found to be most effective for doing something like this?
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