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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Camera movement control…

  • Camera movement control…

    Posted by Lex Park on August 31, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    Hey Cows,

    I need some help… I’m trying to do an animation where at the start, the camera begins moving forward while following a winding path (a red line, for now). While it winds around in this forward-moving manner (like driving), images, text, and other content pass by.

    I cannot for the life of me figure out how to follow this line with the camera without painstakingly trying to key the movements using a Null layer to control the camera. Is there an easier way to do this?

    Any help will be greatly appreciated, as always.

    – The Foonshoe

    Lex Park replied 18 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Lex Park

    August 31, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    Oh, I created the line in Illustrator so I could zoom right in on it without losing crispness (with the continually rasterize setting AE).
    I drew up the curvy line, then in AE, converted that layer to 3D and set the X Orientation to 273

  • Josh Kirschenbaum

    August 31, 2007 at 9:32 pm

    You can use illustrator paths as “paths” for animation – just highlight the Z position of the camera and paste the path from illustrator – it will add keyframes to follow the path. I use this technique all the time to create circular path animations without having to use nulls…

  • Mike Clasby

    August 31, 2007 at 10:28 pm

    Yep… here’s a walk through and a few other tips:

    Expressing the Camera: Animating Along a Path

    https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1.php

    And a second that uses expressions to look ahead:

    https://library.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2.php

  • Lex Park

    September 7, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    Incredibly helpful! Thanks!

  • Lex Park

    September 7, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Thanks a ton! That tutorial gave me exactly the info I needed to help clear things up. Thanks again!

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