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How can you make a camera sweep around a fixed point?
I’m trying to make the camera sweep in a circle while remaining fixed on a specific point. I’ve pretty much got it working, but I have a couple of questions.
This is the image I want to sweep around:
Specifically, I want to sweep in a circle while keeping the centre of the red circle (which is the anchor point of the group) in the middle of the frame. This shows how the camera is positioned:
From here, I just dragged the anchor point parameter of the group onto the camera. By animating the Y rotation parameter of the camera, I can then track 360 degrees round the map keeping the red circle in the middle of the frame.
This seems like a pretty straightforward issue, but I was wondering if there are any better/smarter ways of achieving it that don’t depend on matching the anchor points of the camera and the object you want to keep in frame?
I ask this because matching the anchor points forces the camera to maintain a set distance from the image. Unless I’m missing something, once the points are matched you can’t move the camera in Z-space because then you will no longer be sweeping around a fixed point, so you can’t zoom in or pull out during the sweep. You can scale the image up or down to give the impression of the camera moving in Z-space, but that’s obviously not an ideal solution.
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2 Replies
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Very good approach. And while true that you can’t move the camera along its z-axis, you can achieve what you want by changing either the Scale or the Angle of View of the camera.
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Mark Spencer
Freelance Producer/Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
Apple-certified Master Trainer
Author, Motion 4 from Peachpit Press
https://www.applemotion.net -
D’oh, of course, you can change the scale of the *camera*…
*slaps forehead*
Thanks again, Mark 🙂
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