Animating Camera Organically

[Noise]

Hi

 

When doing animations, I use a path for the camera and keyframe the movement of the camera target in combination with ease curves.

 

Problem is, I find this process quite cumbersum and would prefer to use something more organic - does anyone know of better techniques for this ?

 

thanks

 

N

[Ricardo Eloy]

I remember seeing some script to do this exact task once...Gotta check what and where it was...

[Paulo Kiefe]

There is a plugin för 3ds max that lets you animate cameras dynamically using a joystick. It realy liberates you from the unnatural process of hand animating cameras.

 

Please take a look at http://www.craftanimations.com/

[oliviercampagne]

hey, you have also the motion capture standart tool of max... you can also mix your smooth movement with a noise controller.

[Noise]

Thanks guys, I'll let you know how I get on.

 

n

[Ricardo Eloy]

Olivier hit the nail. I took a few minutes today to try the Motion Capture feature and got some really great results.

[oliviercampagne]

actually, it is an "old" feature of max that works great !

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

as a side note, if you animate in the traditional way, i would recomend using free cameras over target cameras. they are tons easier to aniamte with. only one object (the camera) instead of two (camera and camera target) to worry about. this will allow you to spend more time on refining the camera path, and creating a more natural free flowing feeling.

[ecastillor]

I always found a smoother way to animate the camera by just moving the camera every 100 frames or so manually, whithout usins a spline as guide.

 

Its harder to control, but a lot smoother

[MegaPixel]

Adding to what ecastiller mentioned, I have found the new Walk Through Camera in version 7 to be very helpful in acheiving this. I just move through my scene with autokey enabled at relatively even increments trying not to do anything too abruptly and the end result is almost always a smooth organic movement.

 

-Mega