January 18, 2011

Camera difficulties and rigs in After Effects


Andrew Devis has 2 more tutorials, this time on some AE camera basics, Animating a Camera 1: Camera Difficulties and Animating a Camera 2: Simple Rig:

“Cameras are notoriously difficult to get to grips with in After Effects. In this tutorial, Andrew Devis explains some of the behaviors and problems that are common to camera animation and then shows how … to create a simple camera rig, and why it is important to get the order of the layers correct to achieve predictable results.”


Here's a few more resources on the AE camera:

There's much more in the AE Help page Adjust a 3D view or move a camera, light, or point of interest and in many AE Portal posts tagged AE camera.

Update: see also After Effects Camera "Target Object" Tutorial by David Biederbeck,

4 comments:

lsslss said...

Too bad it's just a rip off tutorial of what maltaannon showed us in november 2009, with his simple camera rig, at: http://maltaannon.com/articles/after-effects/simple-camera-rig/

And he made it even better with a single layer and sliders on it.

Rich said...

You mean the latest basic video by Devis?

Problems in software are often evident to everyone, and even Maltaannon is relatively new compared to 3D in After Effects.

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying because the larger article refers to many tutorials, but solutions too are often limited in number. But thanks for pointing out that there may be a different and better solution than what Devis offered.

lsslss said...

Hi Rich,
I did mean the 2nd tutorial from Devis, unfortunately it uses the exact same way to make a camera rig as Maltaannon did. Therefore it's more the same then otherwise.

Maltaannon's tut is mentioned in de AEtuts article though.

And I like Maltaannon's approach more because he pulls the controls into a single null layer with sliders, for heading, banking and pitch. So you don't have go into each layer to control these.

Just my thought. ;)

Rich said...

It's a good thought; thanks for explaining it.