Hand Camera movement

[thematt]

Hi there,

I'd like to know if there is a good solution to simulate a Camera movement that looks like the camera is hold by someone's hand?
I have already try to play with Graph editor but nothuing I came out with seems to please the director...I don't know if some of you guys have already done something similar but anyhelp would be so appreciate..

Thanks to all in advance

thematt

[tokyostormdrain]

In reply to:
Hi there,

I'd like to know if there is a good solution to simulate a Camera movement that looks like the camera is hold by someone's hand?
I have already try to play with Graph editor but nothuing I came out with seems to please the director...I don't know if some of you guys have already done something similar but anyhelp would be so appreciate..

Thanks to all in advance

thematt

Well I don't know what you've tried thus far but I'll start with the blatently obvious...

I'm a big fan of camera shake myself. I don't like the look of a static camera, it's too perfect. What I tend to do is keyframe the rotation of the camera, mostly in the Z, to kind of give it a tilt. Nobody holding a camera is going to keep their "transformations frozen", that camera's gonna rotate. : )

It's also going to jitter a lot. Up and down, but only slightly.

I find that keying the rotational axes (axis' ? : )) gives the most dramatic effect, but also keep in mind that a camera being held doesn't always stay on it's point of focus 100% of the time. The target will wander.

Unless it's a steadycam. ; )

All in all what I do is keyframe very close together. A camera shake is not going to jolt and then flllloooooaaaatt ever so slightly to another jolt, they're going to be in succession, very constant.

You can do a lot of this from the camera's POV but using the persp view will help you a lot as well.

I don't have any step by step tutorials for it, but stick with it and you should be able to come away with some nice effects. Good luck.

-FS_RAZ

PS - I just took out my Handycam and walked around my apartment with it. Rotation on the Z in each step and a lot of zooming in and zooming out. Dare I say mess with focal length in the camera's attributes and gasp! depth of field. It actually adds a lot to the effect. Good luck.

[stratik]

I've been wanting to do some of the same stuff for an upcoming short I'm working on.... My solution is this: (I think it's the quickest way to get a good, realistic hand motion down)...

Download the Mousincapture MEL script from here at Highend, install and test it.

In your scene, select your camera, select rotate X and Y in the channel box, and with your camera selected, click show manipulator. That will put a translate arrow in the center of your window. As you move it around, your camera will move to keep it in the center. This will only animate your X and Y attributes. When you have practiced a bit, be sure to set playback to free, and run the script while translating the camera manipulator. It will record your movement in realtime, creating a GENUINE handheld motion (as the motion is created directly form the motion of your hand). If you want to use the same technique for the Z rotation, you can set up a locator with an attribute that drives the camera's Z rotation via driven key. Then, just select that attribute in the channel box of the locator, middle-click in the viewport, and drag back and forth. This will animate your camera's Z rotation in realtime. All the attributes can be animated this way. GOod luck, and have fun with it! I plan to make a tutorial on this soon.

EDIT: When I say set playback to free, that's if there is a lot of geometry in your scene, and playback would be choppy otherwise. If your scene is light, setting it to free will make it go by too fast to record the motion. In that case, set it to normal or even half. Also, I've noticed that when you run the script with the manipulator visible, the manipulator disappears and you have to re-show it in order to animate it. In this case, I would recommend giving yourself some run-up time by giving yourself some negative room on the time slider, so you can have to to get the manipulator visible again by 0 frame. --Either that, or you can just copy & paste some frames from somewhere else to replace the frames you missed while trying to get the manipulator.

I REALLY hope this was helpful.

Ricky
DesignDawg

Edited by DesignDawg on 07/08/01 04:04:49 PM.

[thematt]

Thx a lot guys,

Yes both solution will really help me I'll try that today, actually I came up myself with quite the same technic as Ricky...only used the scipt on alias wavefront site "how too use your mouse as a motion capture device" I think that's the name.;with the command "record attr", cause the mel Mousencapture didn't work for me..;it was puting key but nothing moved..weird..anyway the result are not that bad but yet not good enough (I have to practice)...I'll try too follow all the step by step from you guys..

Thank you so much for the reply

thematt

[stratik]

I have never seen that on the A|W site! I would live to know where you found it, because I would like to try it myself. If you could give me a URL, that would be awesome. Thanks.

Ricky
DesignDawg

[thematt]

Hi Ricky,

here is the link

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/en/Tmpl/Maya...ml&style=normal

I finaly end up using "mouseinCapture plugz" works well, I don't know what I was doing but now everything's fine.

Thx for the help

thematt

[stratik]

Awesome. Glad I could help. Also, I should tell you now..... In creating a tutorial, I found that you may have problems when crossing the poles of the camera. If you do, I would suggest making one locator be the control node for the entire camera, even setting up an aim constrain to use instead of the camera manipulator. Basically, when you cross the poles using the cam manipulator, your camera may flip, like IK does when you rotate it too far. Post results when you get them, and I'm planning to post my tutorial as soon as it's finished.

Ricky
DesignDawg