You can animate a camera’s interest to make the camera follow a path or object. You can also animate the camera itself to create a camera roll.
Animating a camera’s interest is the easiest way to keep any action in the scene in frame. The two most basic ways to do this are to set the interest on a path or to constrain it to an object in the scene.
To animate the interest with a path
1. Draw a curve in your scene using the Create > Curve command on the Model or Animate toolbar.
2. Select the camera’s interest or click the camera icon on a viewport menu bar and choose Select Interest.
3. From the Animate toolbar, choose Create > Path > Set Path. When prompted to select a path, click the curve you created.
4. Set the options you want in the Set Path dialog box.
For more information on how to set paths, see Animating along Paths and Trajectories [ Animation ].
To animate the interest with a constraint
1. Select the camera’s interest or click the camera icon on a viewport menu bar and choose Select Interest.
2. From the Constrain panel, choose Constrain > Position. When prompted to select an object, click on the object to which you would like the camera interest to remained constrained.
For more information on how to define constraints, see Animating with Constraints [ Animation ].
Although you can use the l (L) key to roll a camera, you cannot mark it for animation as you would the scaling, rotation, or translation controls. Instead, you must open the camera constraint’s property editor and mark the Roll parameter from there.
To animate a camera roll
1. In the explorer, make sure that you have selected Show All Nodes and expand the Camera icon (and not the Camera Root or Camera Interest). Expand it until you find the following icon: Camera > Kinematics.
2. Click on the Kinematics icon to open the camera’s Kinematics property editor.
3. On the Direction Constraints page, select the Up Vector tab.
4. Activate the Up Vector and use the Roll parameter to control how much you want the camera to roll. A negative value makes the camera roll to the left and a positive value makes the camera roll to the right.
5. You can adjust the Roll slider and key the parameter by clicking the parameter’s animation icon (little green box).
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If you wish to further edit the roll of your camera, you can edit the Roll parameter’s function curve. To do this, right-click on the animation icon and choose Animation Editor. The function curve for the Roll parameter appear in the editor and you can animate to your heart’s content. |
6. To remove all animation from the Roll parameter, right-click the animation icon and choose Remove Animation.
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