Setting up the camera



While I was animating the character I had some renders done so I can watch my progress and observe any mistakes I have done or on-going issues. In order to do so, I needed to set up a camera so I can track the whole animation of the character. In this post I will present the process of setting up the orbiting camera I have used in my renderings.

Initially I have looked at some online animation demo reels and I noticed that most of the cameras are either completely static either move with the target. The static ones capture the whole action from a side-view most of the times and the mobile ones can follow the action on any axis, moving accordingly. As the walking distance covered by the character in my animation is rather large and it would be hard to fit everything in a static camera’s field of view I decided to go with a mobile camera that follows the character.

Prior to that, I remember looking into the camera view modes available in 3DS Max and seeing the pan and orbit options. The panning camera would rotate left and right, up and down keeping the target in view while the orbit option would make the camera spin around the target. Due to the panning camera having the same travelled distance issue, I thought of using the orbit camera. However, the controls were manual so I the camera had to be animated.

So I decided to do some research and look into the options I had. I wanted a camera that followed my character along the path - even better if the camera could capture from different points of view. While doing so, I have stumbled upon an online video that showcased some camera tricks. In the video a targeted camera was set to revolve around an object indefinitely using path constraining.  The method used was creating a circle helper and then path constraining the movement of the camera to the circle spline after turning on the ‘Auto Key’ animation button. That way, a first key frame would be created for the camera that represented the current position and then another last key frame that represented the same position. As the camera was constrained to move along a path that was a circle, it would now create the effect of ‘orbiting’ around, granted the object was placed in the middle of the circle path. If more than one full spin was necessary, I could have simply duplicated one of the keys and placed it a few frames ahead depending on the speed I wanted the camera to revolve around with.



The next issue I had to deal with now was the fact that the camera would move along a circle path that was completely static meaning that the character would leave the circle within seconds. Although I could’ve animated the path so that it moves at the same speed with the character, I found an easier way to do it. Being quite familiar with constraining objects now since I’ve rigged the model myself, I have simply position constrained the circle to the Central Controller of the character. So instead of animating the circle independently, I have actually bound the circle path to one of the character’s controllers. The reason I chose that particular controller is that it mostly moves on the Y axis (horizontally, from left to right or vice-versa) and only slightly on the Z axis (vertically) meaning that the camera would stay relatively stable.



I now had an orbiting camera that followed my character around, capturing the entire animation. The camera field of view can also be further adjusted.

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