More realistic camera movements

I'm wondering whether anyone can point me in the direction for some tips/guides/resources that can help me on my way to creating a less linear feel for camera control. I've got started on an animation recently and it's going very well, however I've moved onto refining the camera movements now and I got inspired by this animations camera control:

Notice how it is never really still (much like the result of a person filming via a standard DV camera), I'm curious how to achieve this kind of thing.

Here is my animation so far (I've taken out lots of objects in layers manage to reduce render time)- Attached.


Thank you.

not sure what program you're using, but a quick search came up with this for maya http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/d ... mic_01.php

Hollywood camera works http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/mc_index.html
You can also find some outtakes on youtube.

As a side note, camera movments are to underline the story, exagerating it can be very annoying,

Worked on it quite a lot last night...

comments/critiques welcome

It's difficult to tell. Since the background is black and we have only a few foreground elements there are not many of points of reference. Best practice for cameras is to set up a groundplane and then fill the scene with lots of geometric shapes, then dive in with the camera and focus on practicing basic camera moves - pans, trucks etc. while trying to eliminate the 'computerised' feel (which means work in the graph editor)

One piece of advice is to work with a camera rig rather than your basic viewport camera. An example of a basic setup is just to parent the camera to a locator. Then what you have is a camera on a crane (you can offset the camera's position relative to the locator and then, say, rotate the locator... giving the effect of a camera on a boom arm)

Re. camera shake and drift. Create the broad movements first and then work on your drift and noise. (Preferably on a different transform node to the camera so it's easier to work on and understand the graph editor)

Hope that helps

OK to cover your good points:

- I agree regarding the background. It's extremely minimal and I've yet to think of something to put there. I don't want random shapes because this will be a promotional price for a design company (mine). If I do put something in the background it will be semi meaningful other than just a point of reference. Might add a star field (space). - what are trucks?

I have two cameras in that scene, one that follows the speeding bullet after it hits the glass and the other is the one that takes in the shake after fitting the glass and then proceeds to follow it. The second one is my 'crane' camera that follows a null object in the scene.

As for the last point, I've used a 'vibrator' tag (not using max) so that I can change the parameters of when I want the shake to happen without it getting mixed up with the movements of the camera.

I'll post again for my progress and try to make something with the boring background for added realism. The light grey to dark background was just something to add better reflections and light to the scene.


Thanks a lot for your reply.

Just to clear any confusion. My suggestion of using lots of random geometry was meant as a way of practicing camera movements, noting to do with your promotional piece.

Regarding the clip you are working on, it is possible that a starfield would help, if you have star elements and various distances from the camera then the eye will 'understand' the camera shakes that you have going on because there will be other points of reference

A 'truck' is camera terminology for when the camera physically moves (sometimes called a dolly) rather than a pan / tilt (where it rotates)

Reading your last post, you say you have a camera that 'follows' a null object (you mean it has some kind of aim constraint, that looks at the null node?). If that is the case, this could be where you have the problem with your 'linear' feel. 'Look-at' cameras almost always feel computerised and are best avoided.

OK
- added star field with alpha map of a nasa high res photo.
- added 'space warp' field (cliche')
- changed the spinning rings to a lower contrast material (glass again, though I may change this as I appear to be covering everything in glass)

as ever, c&c welcome

Looks interesting, seems to have a lot more depth. I'm not much of a materials guy, but it looks like there are some aliasing artifacts around the rim of the spinning rings. Would be great if u post up the vid.

I "fixed" the aliasing, part of what the problem was, was that I modelled it wrong and resulted in very sharp polygons. I've also put up the default alias level to 2 and max of 4 - this seems to cure most of the jagged edges. Putting it to min of 4 fixes it all but takes a long time to render.

I've rendered it out at h.264 but this always brightens up the whole animation when being played in quicktime so you'll have to ignore the brighter look (don't know how to fix this)

As ever - c&c welcome - as a note, this isn't the whole animation and the 'presents' word that comes in later during this first section is just a place-holder for where the camera goes next. I think I'll make it around 30 or 40 seconds long in total.

the motion blur on rings when camera zooms in goes mental which I suppose doing proper scene motion blue would help but rise the render times dramatically

it wouldn't upload - is there a cap? it's 20mb. Anyway, I've uploaded it here: http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f= ... 54ee9d9790

I like it.
But in my opinion, when it goes from fast to normal speed to slow-motion, the transition is very rough, sudden. I would easin make it smoother.
Another thing that bothers me is at the begining when hes looks ath the "bullet at the distance and back, somthing is too much or missing i cant decide. But maybe more dof( as he tries to focalize on a fast moving object) would help.
But thats just my opinion.

Alright! This is looking much better now, the star-field really helps to give it a point of reference. It would be great to have that star-field on different levels to really add depth. One way to do that would be to have some stars mapped to matte plane (or sphere) which is a little closer to the camera than your current star-field. Then u can add an alpha map to that second star field so all u see is the stars (not the black of the space) and the full star-field behind it.

On to the camera. The movement itself seems a little sluggish at first and the camera pans and zooms at the same time to see the bullet. What this says to me is that the camera operator knows that the bullet is coming. You are going for a hand held feel and it's really important to think in terms of what the camera guy would be thinking (I always treat the camera like it's a character). So this guy is checking out this really awesome swirly thing he found in space when suddenly something approaches really quickly... 'What's that?!' (he pans). 'Can't really see it, better take a closer look' (he zooms). 'Crap! It's heading straight for the cool swirly thing I found over here!' (he pans back)

You see what I'm doing here? The camera is a character, and that's one of the things to keep in mind when going for 'realistic camera movement'. Some really great reference for this type of camera work would be to watch Battlestar Gallactica. I think it goes a little over the top at times, but watch the camera movement there. Some of the pans are really quick and snappy, the zooms punch in in just a few frames.

A few other crits while I think of it.
Give it a little more time when u 'discover' the bullet coming, right now we don't really register a moving object coming at us
Re. the abruptness of going into bullet time. In my opinion the smash of the rings could be way quicker, the camera would need to pan much quicker to keep up then really slam into bullet time.

Now I'm late for work! hehe

I think some particles in the space could really add some depth too. right now its a bit apparent that the background is an image on simple geometry, but that trick global suggested of using two of them with an alpha on the inner one sounds like a great idea and very simple to execute.

also, awesome crits there global!

yes, thanks that's some great feedback and a good inspiration.
I've modified the star field and now I'm working on the camera mapping and following from your advice global, I've checked out some videos including this one from battle star..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGtZAjFr ... re=related

There's a couple notes I gotta add - 1. I'm going to be doing the sound so this will help with the overall feel much better and 2. I want the camera to be sometimes linear (for example after this particular smash scene), as if the camera is on some kind of network of cogs/winches and so on. I don't know how well this will mix with the amateur 'guy in space with camera' feel but I'll give it a shot.

Yeah that's some good reference - seems like there's a lot of fan made vids up on youTube. If you haven't seen the series I really recommend it!

Sound is gonna help for sure. It's often not given as much thought and importance as the visuals but good sound is essential if you want to blow away your audience. As for switching to more mechanised movements after the smash, we'll have to see how that works. I don't think it will be a problem, certainly the transition to super slow motion into a linear motion will work just fine, though I'm not sure what happens after that

Looking forward to updates