Friday, June 6, 2008

bouncing ball

There are a number of ways to get your props to move (animate) in a scene.
One way is to 'direct' the prop to a given point in the room and another is to have the prop follow a path which you have created on the floor.
This article goes through some other approaches.

KEYFRAME METHOD
Using a "freecamera" and "attach" combo, it's possible to not only keyframe the move but also you get the advantage of a curve editor as well.
Experiment with attaching a prop to a freecamera. Now open a new viewport for that camera, and use this to control the freecamera, BUT use your master camera view to see what you are doing. If you do this whilst in the direct mode you can keyframe the freecamera. Once you have the move worked out, select the element on the timeline and choose "edit curve". Note, the first and last keyframes can't be adjusted so be careful with where you start and end you camera move. For those not familiar with a curve editor, it shows you the values for the x,y & z position of the camera over time.
You can adjust the curves to achieve different values for the camera position and the way the camera moves from position to position.

In this example I create a camera move to mimmick a bouncing ball.

If you pan the freecamera you will also get control over the rotation of the prop.

An extension of this method is to tell the freecamera to target another element in the scene, in this way you can achieve some dynamic properties. For example, aligning a prop to a specifc angle regardless of position. You can try doing this whilst the camera is on a path also. This is how I got the soccer ball to spin in the Skull Shot clip. (attach the prop to the freecamera, tell the freecamera to follow a path, get the camera to target some things during the travel).

It's my hope that these animation functions become possible in the next release, until then...

Have fun.

T.


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