How to Create a 3D Camera Fly-By Effect in Adobe After Effects 7 Video

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I want to learn the video effects.

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I want to know all the camera animation

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How to Create a 3D Camera Fly-By Effect in Adobe After Effects 7

Okay let us take the camera animation in a slightly different direction now by looking at some different ways to do flybys. Just going to scrub back to the beginning of the timeline and just going to turn off the position key frame adjustments here for the 35 millimeter camera. I am also going to tell it not to pair in to the null object so just remove any link between the two and then select the null object and delete it from the scene. Now once again we are going to reset both the point of interest and the position of the camera. So select both of those. Right click on one of them and choose reset. It comes back to where we were. And we want to again make sure the point of interest is looking down towards the sun. And we know that that is roughly about 380 pixels down in the scene. So make it sure that we do not have them both selected otherwise we will adjust them both at the same time. Let us grab the Y axis value here for the point of interest and drag that down to round about 380. It does not have to be precise but somewhere around there will do the trick. But let us say we want to do a quick flyby of our scene. Just start the camera roughly where it is and just zoom straight the way through and come out the other side, or even stay above the sun and maybe focus on it as we go by. Well this can present different problems depending on the position of both the camera and the point of interest. The point of interest is currently focused. The camera is dead center of the scene along the Z axis here. So if we were to grab the position value here on the Z axis and start to animate towards the scene. Have a look at what happens. The camera moves over the top, the point of interest is staying focused down. And once we get over the top, After Effects is actually going to spin the camera around and look at the scene from the other side. Now it is actually doing a 180° flip there in the middle which you can just see as you go thorough that. You see the whole texture in the background is changing. That is because After Effects is trying to stay focused on that point of interest as much as it can, and also keep the camera upright. Well if you keep it focused and pass over the top of it, it has no choice but to flip the entire camera around in order to be able to start looking at the object from the back here. So this is one way to do it but it certainly not ideal. First off, let us say we do not even need to focus on the sun. We simply want to fly through the scene. Well you had probably realized already that that can be done by pulling up the auto orient dialogue box using our keyboard shortcut. We can go ahead and tell it to not orient towards anything so the point of interest will now focus dead ahead where the camera is looking. We could now move the camera down on the Y axis to choose the point at which we are going to start, and then we could simply animate the camera along the Z axis and we would actually pass in this case right through the scene. In this case just through the edge pixels there over the sun and we come out the other side. So there is no flip there involved by looking at the point of interest. So a couple of key frames there would give us a fairly decent flyby. But let us say we do want to focus on the sun and make it a little bit more dramatic looking. Well let us undo the position camera changes and also undo the auto orientation so we still have our point of interest set about 380. And this time let us move the camera slightly to the left hand side. I am going to take the position value here and drag it a lot to the left. Now you can see the active view is changing. I am going to move to around 220 or 250, something like that so the camera is at least offset to one side. Now again if we were to animate this on the Z axis by dragging its property here in the timeline, we are effectively doing a flyby here at the sun and staying focused on it, and because we are far enough away from the sun we do not get that sort of whiplash effect where the camera quickly switches angle. But two things here I am not happy with. The first thing is, the camera is too far away from that sun. I actually want it to occupy more of our frame. But you know from the previous example that if we move the camera even closer to the sun, it is going to all of a sudden flip again because the distance between the point of interest and the camera body itself is too close. The other side of it is it just looks too faked. I do not like to focus on an object that is perfectly centered in the middle of my frame. It just looks completely computer generated. If we were physically in a spaceship or something flying past this planet, and we move our camera to follow it, the chances are we are not going to have the time to focus on it dead center. We do want a little bit of variation in there. So if we are trying to achieve a more cinematic and realistic look, here is a different way to approach that same problem. Just going to put the camera where it was for just a second. And then come down to the timeline and adjust a couple of the values. First thing we are going to do is adjust the Y axis. I want the camera to be slightly lower down. In that case when we flyby the planet we will actually be closer to it. We are going to leave the left hand X value here at 250. What we are aiming to do is to put a much larger distance between the position of the camera and its point of interest, which then gives this a much smoother control over how the camera will rotate overtime. Now we are also going to start the camera a little bit further back. So let us drag this to the left hand side and make the camera start at round about 1000 pixels. I am going to try and use some fairly precise values here just to round them up and make it easy for us to set them off. So we are starting a thousand pixels behind the center of our scene here, 250 off to the left and around 300 pixels down on the Y axis. At zero seconds, let us make sure we add a key frame for those values and then scrub out to eight seconds on our timeline. This is where our flyby is currently going to end. And then come back to the position values and make just one change. The X and the Y are going to stay exactly the same. The only thing we are adjusting is the Z axis. We want the camera to move past the central point and take us all the way in the other direction. Now again as I am dragging here, I am not getting much movement so I am going to hold down the Shift key and increase the amount of change I get and start to drag out to the other side. And I will settle for around about 700 or 750 pixels, something like that. So what I have just done is simply animate the Z position off the camera across time so we get our immediate flyby, but we are sort of in the same position we were at before. We get this slight amount of whiplash not quite so bad now, but the worst thing about this still is that the planet is focused in the center of the screen. So this is why we will now go to the extent of animating the point of interest. The further we put the point of interest away from the body of the camera itself, the much smoother our animation will be.

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Okay let us take the camera animation in a slightly different direction now by looking at some different ways to do flybys. Just going to scrub back to the beginning of the timeline and just going to turn off the position key frame adjustments here for the 35 millimeter camera. I am also going to tell it not to pair in to the null object so just remove any link between the two and then select the null object and delete it from the scene.

Now once again we are going to reset both the point of interest and the position of the camera. So select both of those. Right click on one of them and choose reset. It comes back to where we were. And we want to again make sure the point of interest is looking down towards the sun.

And we know that that is roughly about 380 pixels down in the scene. So make it sure that we do not have them both selected otherwise we will adjust them both at the same time. Let us grab the Y axis value here for the point of interest and drag that down to round about 380. It does not have to be precise but somewhere around there will do the trick.

But let us say we want to do a quick flyby of our scene. Just start the camera roughly where it is and just zoom straight the way through and come out the other side, or even stay above the sun and maybe focus on it as we go by.

Well this can present different problems depending on the position of both the camera and the point of interest. The point of interest is currently focused. The camera is dead center of the scene along the Z axis here. So if we were to grab the position value here on the Z axis and start to animate towards the scene. Have a look at what happens. The camera moves over the top, the point of interest is staying focused down. And once we get over the top, After Effects is actually going to spin the camera around and look at the scene from the other side.

Now it is actually doing a 180° flip there in the middle which you can just see as you go thorough that. You see the whole texture in the background is changing. That is because After Effects is trying to stay focused on that point of interest as much as it can, and also keep the camera upright.

Well if you keep it focused and pass over the top of it, it has no choice but to flip the entire camera around in order to be able to start looking at the object from the back here. So this is one way to do it but it certainly not ideal.

First off, let us say we do not even need to focus on the sun. We simply want to fly through the scene. Well you had probably realized already that that can be done by pulling up the auto orient dialogue box using our keyboard shortcut. We can go ahead and tell it to not orient towards anything so the point of interest will now focus dead ahead where the camera is looking.

We could now move the camera down on the Y axis to choose the point at which we are going to start, and then we could simply animate the camera along the Z axis and we would actually pass in this case right through the scene. In this case just through the edge pixels there over the sun and we come out the other side.

So there is no flip there involved by looking at the point of interest. So a couple of key frames there would give us a fairly decent flyby. But let us say we do want to focus on the sun and make it a little bit more dramatic looking.

Well let us undo the position camera changes and also undo the auto orientation so we still have our point of interest set about 380. And this time let us move the camera slightly to the left hand side. I am going to take the position value here and drag it a lot to the left.

Now you can see the active view is changing. I am going to move to around 220 or 250, something like that so the camera is at least offset to one side. Now again if we were to animate this on the Z axis by dragging its property here in the timeline, we are effectively doing a flyby here at the sun and staying focused on it, and because we are far enough away from the sun we do not get that sort of whiplash effect where the camera quickly switches angle.

But two things here I am not happy with. The first thing is, the camera is too far away from that sun. I actually want it to occupy more of our frame. But you know from the previous example that if we move the camera even closer to the sun, it is going to all of a sudden flip again because the distance between the point of interest and the camera body itself is too close.

The other side of it is it just looks too faked. I do not like to focus on an object that is perfectly centered in the middle of my frame. It just looks completely computer generated. If we were physically in a spaceship or something flying past this planet, and we move our camera to follow it, the chances are we are not going to have the time to focus on it dead center. We do want a little bit of variation in there.

So if we are trying to achieve a more cinematic and realistic look, here is a different way to approach that same problem. Just going to put the camera where it was for just a second. And then come down to the timeline and adjust a couple of the values.

First thing we are going to do is adjust the Y axis. I want the camera to be slightly lower down. In that case when we flyby the planet we will actually be closer to it. We are going to leave the left hand X value here at 250. What we are aiming to do is to put a much larger distance between the position of the camera and its point of interest, which then gives this a much smoother control over how the camera will rotate overtime.

Now we are also going to start the camera a little bit further back. So let us drag this to the left hand side and make the camera start at round about 1000 pixels. I am going to try and use some fairly precise values here just to round them up and make it easy for us to set them off.

So we are starting a thousand pixels behind the center of our scene here, 250 off to the left and around 300 pixels down on the Y axis. At zero seconds, let us make sure we add a key frame for those values and then scrub out to eight seconds on our timeline. This is where our flyby is currently going to end. And then come back to the position values and make just one change.

The X and the Y are going to stay exactly the same. The only thing we are adjusting is the Z axis. We want the camera to move past the central point and take us all the way in the other direction. Now again as I am dragging here, I am not getting much movement so I am going to hold down the Shift key and increase the amount of change I get and start to drag out to the other side.

And I will settle for around about 700 or 750 pixels, something like that. So what I have just done is simply animate the Z position off the camera across time so we get our immediate flyby, but we are sort of in the same position we were at before. We get this slight amount of whiplash not quite so bad now, but the worst thing about this still is that the planet is focused in the center of the screen.

So this is why we will now go to the extent of animating the point of interest. The further we put the point of interest away from the body of the camera itself, the much smoother our animation will be.

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