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Camera mess :-(
My camera skills are not so slick to say the least. Mostly I use track and zoom with layers oriented to the camera and no poi. Orientation is off for the camera. I try to make the movement a bit fluent by tweaking the motion path. So far I alway got away with it. But now I have to do some panning accross two pictures lined up next to eachother and create a pan from left to right in a (almost) constant speed. During panning I go a bit up and down and little zooming in/out to specific points on the pictures. However the camera movement doesn’t look that good. How can I get some more control and don’t get stangled by poi’s or orientation?
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4 Replies
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Use layers of parented nulls to isolate each kind of movement.
So first create a null and call it “dolly” so that you know it is just doing the main move. Only worry about it’s position, ignore rotation.
When you like that, create a second null and parent it to the first. On this null just animate any up/down movement you want.
Create a third, parent it to the second. Now just do pans, etc..
Name each layer. Then finally at the end, parent the camera to the last in the chain. So then when you want to modify the pan you are only dealing with one rotation value on one null.
This method makes things way more smooth, and controllable, especially when adding layers of movement. I also create a null I call “shake” that just does a small vibration to add a handheld feel.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Thanx Chris for your quick response! I’m in a tight schedule here. A few questions though.
1. From your story I understand that I end up with a chain of nulls parented to the camera?
2. Basically I have 1 wide image (roughly 7600 x 2400 the 2 images attached to eachother) but a D1 PAL project. Do I put all this in a precomp and put that one in the PAL master comp?As alternative I was trying in a D1 PAL comp moving the image and have the camera only to animate zoom and POI. From your story I understand this is a dead end. I’ll qiuckly try to set up your story and get back with soon with more questions 😉
Thanx, s t o l i
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It is a chain, but I more think of it as the camera parented to the end of a chain of nulls. So the top null is a parent of the next and so on ending with the camera which just rides along. You would obviously want to animate the zoom(focal length) and focal point in the camera since nulls don’t have that capability.
As far as precomping, I’m not exactly sure what you mean. You would want to have the Pictures in 3D space with the camera and nulls though.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
Sorry Chris, I wasn’t joking about my camera skills. What I want to do is fill the canvas completly with the image, so no floating in 3d space as an object. Also, I don’t need depth of field. I was just puzzeled by way to solve this one. In the meantime I’m busy setting this one up in a D1 PAL comp. As for orientation -as in turning your head left or right- (just trying to get the jargon right), do I use the camera’s POI or a 3D null? A null makes more sense I guess. And do I set the layer’s orientation off or towards camera?
Thanx again, s t o l i
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