Complex Camera moves. Is there an easier way?

[Erik Pontius]

I just did this exact same thing for a show. Moved a camera in 3d through a maze of video walls, to end with the title. I don’t know of any
You’ll want to set up a workspace where you have an Active camera window, a Top view window and a Right view window…this will make it easier to navigate around in the 3d space (also keep the “H” and “V” keys handy to switch between the hand tool, needed for moving the view around in the windows and to manipulate keyframes and object, respectively. Create a white (or color of your choice) 2d solid to act as a cyc (2d objects are not affected by cameras). Then start simple…enable the starting keyframes for the camera and point of interest, then move towards the end of your comp where you are going to end up, move the camera into place to set ending keyframes. Loosely drop in your videos (in my case I created separate comps for each of my videos, using a mask and the stroke effect to frame the videos). Then start at the beginning of the comp, moving the camera and point of interst to the major turns. Use “continuous bezier” for the keyframe interpolation. Smooth out the turns by adjusting the bezier handles and the position of the keyframes in the windows, and in time on the timeline.
Trish & Chris Meyer’s book “Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects vol.1” has a good chapter tutorial on 3d camera movement.

[Chris Smith]

Make your life a lot easier and turn off the align to point of interst first. Second break up your primary movements into layers using nulls so everything is seperate.

So one null only moves on the X/Y plane. That’s it. No rotations at all.
Parent a null to this null then make this the rotations to point the camera.
keep parenting nulls to each other in a chain for each new “layer” of motion you want to do
Lastly parent the camera to the end of the chain.

That way if you screw up one thing, you haven’t changed the other things. Much easier and more organized this way.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Richard Ladius]

I was afraid of that… I was hoping I could draw a mask of some sort and have the camera follow that, but I guess I’m gonna have to fudge-n-smudge it. Thanks very much for the advice!

[Richard Ladius]

I’m sorry to admit this, but that went completely over my head. How would assigning seperate nulls to different types of movement (I’m assuming planes of position and rotating) be more efficient? Sorry, I’m still relatively new to Camera movement/animation.

[Chris Smith]

You can copy masks and paste them into position parameters so your camera moves along a path. Furthermore you can turn on align to path for the cam.

Also use roving keyframes. So that the keys between thne end keys rove in time automatically to keep the motion smooth and constant rather than speed/slowing where not wanted.

For details on any of this check your manual or help files.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Richard Ladius]

I’ve tried to copy the mask and paste it into my camera’s position properties, but it pastes it into the X-Y Plane, not the X-Z Plane. Is there a toggle to correct this somewhere? Thanks for all the help!

[Chris Smith]

Try parenting the cam to a null, then rotate the null 90 degrees so the cam moves on the XZ plane.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Manny Rellesiva]

Im not an advance user of after effects though im also not a newbie. I find it interesting when you guys mentioned about moving the camera by using a null object/layer. Also i find it hard to have a smooth motion in using the camera. Though your advise in using a null object is quite not clear to me. Could you point me to any online tutorial that make use of the null object? Thansk in advance

[Sam Moulton]

i learned a lot from this tutorial

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2/index.html