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camera following rolling object
Hi I’m trying to get a camera to follow a rolling object ( a tumble weed in progress…). The tumble weed is being blown in one direction. I basically want the camera to follow it without spinning with the object. I want to Tumble weed to stay in the center of the frame throughout the animation and I want the camera to maintain a distance from it throughout the animation. What I’ve done sofar is to project the path of the tumble weed on the x-z axis using a tracer object and the project spline tool. I moved the path parallel to the movement of the tumble weed and aligned a camera to it. Here’s the problem: I cannot get the camera to match the speed of the tumble weed. I guess it’s because I’ve taken the y-motion out of the equation ( want the camera to move only across the x-z)….here is the file:
https://f1.creativecow.net/10202/10202?uploaded=file -
5 Replies
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See if this suits you:
10203_10202tumbleweedfollow.c4d.zip
I removed the align to spline tag and added two Xpresso driver tags – one with the X position of the tumbleweed driving the relative X position of the camera, and the other driving the relative Z position. Though it’s not needed anymore, I left your tracer spline just for visual reference so you could see how these Xpresso tags are maintaining that initial relative position.
If you’re not familiar with this Xpresso, here’s a tutorial:
https://www.eyedesyn.com/tutorials/the-easiest-bit-of-xpresso-you-need-to-know-in-cinema-4d/
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I forgot to mention that the initial X and Y camera positions are slightly different in my example simply because I just quickly matched the X position to the tracer spline by eye from a Top view before adding the Xpresso tag, and I adjusted the Y position just to put the camera in what looked liked a good “average” view. You could keyframe the camera’s Y position appropriately if you want to follow the vertical movement more, or even create an Xpresso tag for it (but that might create a rather sickening camera bounce).
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Hi! thanks again for your help,
another question about the tumbleweed, I know it’s been a while but I had to work on several other projects in the meantime!
I basically want the tumble weed to be in the center of the camera “shot” at all times. When I try and get the camera to follow it, it rolls with it, Is there a way out of this? -
going back to your original uploaded file if you set the Tracer spline Intermediate Points to Uniform and then add a Target tag to the camera with the Target Object set to the Null which is a child of the tumble weed (but move the null up to be more the center of the tumbleweed). That follows the tumbleweed better (don’t know if it’s exactly what you are meaning).
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As Brian suggested, a Target tag will keep the camera pointing at the tumbleweed, and thus keep it in the center of the shot. If you want the camera to remain even with the tumbleweed as it bounces, and not pivot vertically to maintain the shot, you can create an Xpresso driver tag for the Y position as I mentioned in a previous response. If I remember correctly the tumbleweed doesn’t bounce much after it gets rolling, so either option should work without inducing motion sickness. 😉
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