Animating Camera Matching Speed With Car

[ruddiger52]

Animating a camera matching speed with a car
Ok Ive tried everything i can think of and cant get this anmation to look smooth. Imagine a car in the distance going from 0-60 directly toward a stationary camera. As the car gets closer I need the camera to start moving and match speed with the car. But it has to be smooth and have a little drift. For example the car gets close enough that the it fills the frame and then the camera smoothly out paces the car so you get a nice shot of the car.

Trying to manually animate the camera to match the speed of the car and while maintaining the control of a subtle drift has been impossible, always at some point the car out paces the camera totally. Ive tried animating parenting constraints but cannot get anything smooth. It seemed like this was going to be an easy one but it wasnt.

Does anyone have a good approach for this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[joojaa]

constrain to a locator in car space and constrauin to locator in free space. animate the weights.

[ruddiger52]

I eventually tried that, but it is really hard to fine tune. I think the thing that is making it difficult is the camera is stationary for the first second of the animation as the car goes from 0-60 and the ease in of the animation curve is very hard to duplicate on the camera I tried animating the weight of a parent contraint but it seems that unless you have two parent contraints in the mix, it will only work as on or off. The two parent contraint method is just too complicated to work with.

Thanks for the advice.

[joojaa]

QUOTE(ruddiger52 @ 07/01/08, 07:41 PM) [snapback]287738[/snapback]
The two parent contraint method is just too complicated to work with.

I dont feel it is thik so, its infitely easier than what your doing. What you do is make one camera that follows the car and one that is statiionary, animate them as normal. Then make a third called blend cam and then just blend it whenever you need to thisway whay you have is 3 wievports and all your workflow is the same and you have a free blend.

Eg think of the ball as car.

CODE
file -f -new;
sphere;
setNamedPanelLayout "Four View";
camera -centerOfInterest 5 -focalLength 35 -n lookAtCar;
lookThroughModelPanel lookAtCar1 modelPanel1;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.translateX" 6.752;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.translateY" 4.052;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.translateZ" -0.162;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.rotateX" -27.6;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.rotateY" 91.2;
setAttr "lookAtCar1.rotateZ" 0;
parent lookAtCar1 nurbsSphere1;
camera -centerOfInterest 5 -focalLength 35 -n stationaryCam;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateX" 1.083;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateY" 6.058;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateZ" 7.89;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateX" -31.051;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateY" -40.535;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateZ" 8.074;
SetKey;
lookThroughSelected 0 modelPanel3;
playbackOptions -min 0 -max 100;
select -r nurbsSphere1;
currentTime 0;
move -r 13.56885 0 0;
SetKey;
currentTime 100;
move -r -26.275164 0 0;
SetKey;
// now blend cam (never animate the blend
// cam itself jsut one of the other cams you
// have freedom of doing so in other views.
camera -centerOfInterest 5 -focalLength 35 -n blendCam;
lookThroughModelPanel blendCam1 modelPanel2;
parentConstraint -weight 1 stationaryCam1 blendCam1;
parentConstraint -weight 0 lookAtCar1 blendCam1;
//ease animation
expression -s ("blendCam1_parentConstraint1.lookAtCar1W1="+
              "1-blendCam1_parentConstraint1.stationaryCam1W0")
              -o blendCam1_parentConstraint1 -ae 1 -uc all;
currentTime 52;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateX" 6.9;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateY" 6.732;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.translateZ" 7.745;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateX" -28.652;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateY" 44.854;
setAttr "stationaryCam1.rotateZ" 8.66;
setKeyframe stationaryCam1;
setKeyframe "blendCam1_parentConstraint1.w0";
currentTime 74;
setAttr "blendCam1_parentConstraint1.stationaryCam1W0" 0;
setKeyframe "blendCam1_parentConstraint1.w0";
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_visibility;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_translateX;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_translateY;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_translateZ;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_rotateX;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_rotateY;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_rotateZ;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_scaleX;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_scaleY;
selectKey -add -k -t 1 -t 52 stationaryCam1_scaleZ;
setInfinity -poi linear;
selectKey -add -k -t 74 blendCam1_parentConstraint1_stationaryCam1W0;
keyTangent -itt flat -ott flat;

Ok the start key could be tweaked a bit but you get teh poit after all i did this in less than 2 minutes. ignore the blebd cam when you do something.

[user_deleted]

QUOTE
Imagine a car in the distance going from 0-60 directly toward a stationary camera. The car gets close enough that the it fills the frame and then the camera smoothly out paces the car so you get a nice shot of the car.

It feels to me like the problem is not technical but conceptual. If your car goes 0-60 and fills the frame, your camera can't "smoothly" start to follow it. It would have to whiplash into motion.

Now if you want the cam to start moving before the car fills the frame, that could work...
But I don't understand why this is problematic. Is your car going in a straight line? If so it should be easy to do... I suppose if it's curved it's a bit trickier but still, should work with a few keyframes?

If not, "listen to this dude joojaa, he knows what he's talking about."

[joojaa]

Well for a linear snag me up move you could bake down a hard switch then smooth out the resuting anim curve solution offcourse it gets hard to work on later, offcourse you only need that one section.

[user_deleted]

that's a great idea. I will definitely be using that gag.