Advice Needed For Smooth Camera Move

[Walter Soyka]

[Aaron Rosapepe] “I have a simple shot in which the camera is flying down on a scene and settling in on a graphic. What I want is for the camera to start out at a constant speed and gradually decelerate towards the end of the move so that it pushes in on the graphic slowly by the end. I have tried several methods but am not achieving the desired results.”

Which methods did you try?

Have you seen Andrew Devis’s camera animation tutorials?

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Animating-a-Camera-1/1

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Animating-a-Camera-2/1

https://library.creativecow.net/devis_andrew/Animating-a-Camera-3/1

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Another way to do it is to try to ease in the end keyframe, then precomp and use time remap to slow down the move even further at the end.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually tried to do that last night but when I pre-comped the layers the overall look of the project changed.

The initial project was started by someone else and I am not sure why pre-comping all the layers caused this shift.

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Thanks Walter. I’ll have a look through those and see if I can find a workaround to the problem I’m experiencing.

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Haven’t sorted it out so far. Time mapping the pre comp may be the way to go if I can get the layers to cooperate.

Basically if you think of the camera as a car, I have the car going from point A to point B exactly how I like. Now I would just like the car to slow down gradually and evenly about half way through it’s journey.

Is there a way to control this through the graph directly or is time remapping the only way? I’ve tried easy ease on the final key frame but this doesn’t really do it.

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Thanks for the suggestion. I actually tried to do that last night but when I pre-comped the layers the overall look of the project changed. The initial project was started by someone else and I am not sure why pre-comping all the layers caused this shift.

EDIT: Figured out the culprits in the pre-comp issue. I will give this method a shot, thanks!

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Ted, I got my comp layer issues sorted and this is working like a charm. Exactly the look I wanted, thank you!

[Darby Edelen]

The graph editor in the timeline is the way I would do this. Using ‘Edit Speed Graph’ it’s easy to see where the speed is constant (flat line) and where it is accelerating (sloping upward) or decelerating (sloping downward).

If you simply make the last keyframe easy ease then you will end up with acceleration in the early part of the animation to make up for the deceleration at the end of the animation, so you’ll need to tweak the graph.

I’ll attach some images of a sample graph editor workflow I would use for this. Using the graph editor takes some time to get accustomed to, but it’s time well spent 🙂

Darby Edelen

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

cool, glad to hear it helped. I use this method to time a lot of my animations and camera moves.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Aaron Rosapepe]

Nice explanation Darby. Thanks for taking the time to post that!