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Extremely Perplexing “Camera Wobble” when doing lateral tracking
I am attempting to do a simple sideways lateral tracking shot where the camera slows down and speeds up between different “backdrops” in the the comp. I chose initially to do this simple move by keyframing the camera’s position and position of interest simultaneously between each start and stop. The camera movement is perfectly straight; the only variable that changes is the x value in the Position and Piont of Interest (the two values are always identical to each other) .
Simple enough… except one problem: in the quick camera side-tracks the movement is smooth, but in the longer segments where the camera must track slowly, there is a slight “wobble” in the movement in the course of the movement where the camera does a slight move back in the x-axis before proceeding to finish the movement.
I tried all conceivable variations in Keyframe Interpolation. I also observed that in many cases (but not all), the camera does a 2 or 3 pixel increase in the Y value for camera position in the middle of the movement, even though I never keyframed such a change at all. Oddly enough, in one long movement, the camera tracks perfectly.
I studied the keyframe graphs and indeed there is a slight move-back which I can’t get my head around. Most perplexingly, when I take off the camera keyframes and parent the camera to a null object and do the same move with that, a similiar thing continues to happen.
What am I not getting?
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6 Replies
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look at the graphs for your keyframes… I’ve had similar problems in the past, but can’t remember exactly what to change. Make sure you look at graphs for all your properties.
If you think it’s bad in After Effects, try Poser… I just about wanna pull my hair out with it’s keyframe interpolation weirdness.
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Ugh… I found the solution.
I called up Maltaannon (maltaannon.com) and I explained the problem to him … as it turns out, it was very minor: in the Keyframe Interpolation setting window (when right-clicking 2 adjacent position keyframes for the null object) my Spatial Interpolation setting was set to Bezier. As it turns out, any setting other than Linear will create the wobble effect (irrespective of whether the Temporal Interpolation is set to Linear, Bezier, or Auto Bezier). The perplexing thing is, in those segments where the camera did track correctly, the Spatial Interpolation was set to Bezier — it was this reason why I did not think this was the issue. In those cases, it was just a quirk.
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[Shahriar Rahman] “The perplexing thing is, in those segments where the camera did track correctly, the Spatial Interpolation was set to Bezier — it was this reason why I did not think this was the issue. In those cases, it was just a quirk. “
This should only occur when the two keyframes occupy positions very close to one another, otherwise there is plenty of distance over which to create the spatial bezier curve.
As a general rule I recommend setting your spatial interpolation to default to linear in your general preferences. If you want bezier curves you can always add them in later with the pen tool.
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Thanks for the tip! The difference between the x-position values was around 70 to 100 pixels, so I suppose that this distance is too small for a Bezier or Auto bezier Spatial Interpolation setting to make smooth (so there is no “wobble”). Learn something new everyday.
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For Auto Bezier spatial interpolation it also depends on how fast the layer is moving when it gets to the keyframe… the faster it’s moving the farther it’s going to boomerang past the keyframe.
Darby Edelen
Lead Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
… yes, I am subscribing to Aharon’s podcast! (I have been seeing his tutorials for a while but missed the ones about “boomeranging” — in case if Aharon is reading this).
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