How to Animate a Camera from Side to Side in Adobe After Effects 7 Video

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How to Animate a Camera from Side to Side in Adobe After Effects 7

Let us change our top view over here now by clicking in the left hand view and let us change that to the left view for just one second. Now if we zoom out using the tool that we currently have selected and just scroll across a little bit here and there, we can see that the camera is actually positioned quite high in 3D space. Well the reason for that is the camera by default as you can see here in the timeline is positioned at 270 pixels down on the Y axis that is exactly half of our composition. So we are going back towards the Cartesian measuring system here. So it is positioned halfway down that means that all of the elements have actually been created even lower than that, so they are not in their default position as well. Now if we go back to the main selection tool by hitting the V key and we will just drag here on the Y axis of the camera, we are just going to bring it down a little bit so it looks like we are pointing here directly at the sun in the center of this model. Now we can double check that by coming back to the view options here and changing to the front view, and we can see in just a couple of pixels out here, so maybe just drag a shade more that would do very nicely. A handy little keyboard shortcut for you here as well, if we keep changing between views such as front and top, and back and forth in one view, hitting the Esc key will allow you to go backwards and forwards between the two previously chosen cameras. And that is in any view that you currently have active, so worth remembering that if you find yourself bouncing back and forth between the same two views every single time, very handy for constructing the 3D animation. Now in this case we are going to set this back to the top view because we want to create a simple tracking animation. Well, the camera just moves across the scene like we saw earlier on, but we want to add some key frames to that and make it work. So our camera is currently highlighted and if we grab our X axis here and drag off to the left hand side, you will see our point of interest is automatically being moved along with it, so let us start round about here so a couple of the planets are visible, remember this is what is going to render over here on the right hand side. And if we come down to the timeline here, you can see that both of these measurements are showing up exactly the same on the X and the Y axis, this is very important. Now we are going to apply a position key frame here by turning on the stopwatch and let us scroll out a little way to around three seconds. I will give us just enough time to check this out and then we will grab the X axis handle again here in the top view and drag across the right hand side. Now as you are dragging have a look in the timeline, you can see that the position value and the point of interest values are both changing at the same time, which suggest we are getting a finished animation here and we can indeed see the motion path that the X axis of the camera is now taking. Well let us hit the Home key and go back to the beginning of the animation and just hit the Spacebar and play it. You will see that we are not getting the result that we expected. For some reason the point of interest is staying anchored on the right hand side of the scene, instead of being set to stay forward with the camera as we move it, well the reason for that is, even though we move the camera around using the axis control as we did, the point of interest because it is a separate entity will also need to be key framed. Remember, this is a point in space which is represented by our X, Y and Z values here. These values do not effectively relate to the distance between the camera position and the focal point. This value you are actually seeing is the position of that point in 3D space. If that stays in one place, then the point of interest will stay in one place. So what we need to do is let us back up a couple of steps back to the beginning of the animation and turn on the key frame for both position and point of interest. Once again, if we scrub out just a few seconds on the timeline and perform exactly the same function, as we drag across in the top view, you will now see two motion paths being created both the X axis here and the point of interest X axis, if we now scrub back and forth through the animation, you can see that we have got a perfect tracking shot by locking those two elements in. Now the quick and easy way to do that instead would be to go ahead and turn auto orientation off. Remember the camera will always then face forwards unless you then choose to physically rotate it yourself. But there maybe times where you do want to start out with a tracking shot like this, but maybe towards the right hand side. The camera starts to rotate and look at something else that is why you still need the point of interest as an animateable item. So do not get caught out with that one. It is very easy to do because in the active view especially, it looks like everything was going according to plan. It is only on playback that this became a problem.

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Let us change our top view over here now by clicking in the left hand view and let us change that to the left view for just one second. Now if we zoom out using the tool that we currently have selected and just scroll across a little bit here and there, we can see that the camera is actually positioned quite high in 3D space.

Well the reason for that is the camera by default as you can see here in the timeline is positioned at 270 pixels down on the Y axis that is exactly half of our composition. So we are going back towards the Cartesian measuring system here. So it is positioned halfway down that means that all of the elements have actually been created even lower than that, so they are not in their default position as well.

Now if we go back to the main selection tool by hitting the V key and we will just drag here on the Y axis of the camera, we are just going to bring it down a little bit so it looks like we are pointing here directly at the sun in the center of this model. Now we can double check that by coming back to the view options here and changing to the front view, and we can see in just a couple of pixels out here, so maybe just drag a shade more that would do very nicely.

A handy little keyboard shortcut for you here as well, if we keep changing between views such as front and top, and back and forth in one view, hitting the Esc key will allow you to go backwards and forwards between the two previously chosen cameras. And that is in any view that you currently have active, so worth remembering that if you find yourself bouncing back and forth between the same two views every single time, very handy for constructing the 3D animation.

Now in this case we are going to set this back to the top view because we want to create a simple tracking animation. Well, the camera just moves across the scene like we saw earlier on, but we want to add some key frames to that and make it work. So our camera is currently highlighted and if we grab our X axis here and drag off to the left hand side, you will see our point of interest is automatically being moved along with it, so let us start round about here so a couple of the planets are visible, remember this is what is going to render over here on the right hand side.

And if we come down to the timeline here, you can see that both of these measurements are showing up exactly the same on the X and the Y axis, this is very important. Now we are going to apply a position key frame here by turning on the stopwatch and let us scroll out a little way to around three seconds. I will give us just enough time to check this out and then we will grab the X axis handle again here in the top view and drag across the right hand side.

Now as you are dragging have a look in the timeline, you can see that the position value and the point of interest values are both changing at the same time, which suggest we are getting a finished animation here and we can indeed see the motion path that the X axis of the camera is now taking.

Well let us hit the Home key and go back to the beginning of the animation and just hit the Spacebar and play it. You will see that we are not getting the result that we expected. For some reason the point of interest is staying anchored on the right hand side of the scene, instead of being set to stay forward with the camera as we move it, well the reason for that is, even though we move the camera around using the axis control as we did, the point of interest because it is a separate entity will also need to be key framed.

Remember, this is a point in space which is represented by our X, Y and Z values here. These values do not effectively relate to the distance between the camera position and the focal point. This value you are actually seeing is the position of that point in 3D space. If that stays in one place, then the point of interest will stay in one place.

So what we need to do is let us back up a couple of steps back to the beginning of the animation and turn on the key frame for both position and point of interest. Once again, if we scrub out just a few seconds on the timeline and perform exactly the same function, as we drag across in the top view, you will now see two motion paths being created both the X axis here and the point of interest X axis, if we now scrub back and forth through the animation, you can see that we have got a perfect tracking shot by locking those two elements in.

Now the quick and easy way to do that instead would be to go ahead and turn auto orientation off. Remember the camera will always then face forwards unless you then choose to physically rotate it yourself. But there maybe times where you do want to start out with a tracking shot like this, but maybe towards the right hand side. The camera starts to rotate and look at something else that is why you still need the point of interest as an animateable item.

So do not get caught out with that one. It is very easy to do because in the active view especially, it looks like everything was going according to plan. It is only on playback that this became a problem.

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