camera following

Wondering how to accomplish a certain animation task? Ask here.

Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger

Post Reply
wr3yth
Posts: 48
Joined: Sun Dec 03, 2017 11:39 pm

camera following

Post by wr3yth »

hello guys
how can i follow a moving object with camera?
i want that object to be exactly in middle of camera and not get out of sync
I
User avatar
Víctor Paredes
Site Admin
Posts: 5646
Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 12:18 am
Location: Barcelona/Chile
Contact:

Re: camera following

Post by Víctor Paredes »

Open the layer properties and check "Immune to camera"
Image Image Image Image
Moho Product Manager

www.mohoanimation.com
Rigged animation supervisor in My father's dragon - Lead Moho artist in Wolfwalkers - Cartoon Saloon - My personal Youtube Channel
User avatar
Greenlaw
Posts: 9192
Joined: Mon Jun 19, 2006 5:45 pm
Location: Los Angeles
Contact:

Re: camera following

Post by Greenlaw »

That kinda works but I don't think it's quite what wr3yth is asking for. With Immune To Camera, you're basically 'pinning' the layer to the camera and it's the camera that's doing all the moving, not the layer. Depending on the animation you need, that can work for many situations but this isn't really the camera following a moving item.

Being able to constrain the camera to other items would be useful but, unfortunately, I don't think this is currently possible in Moho. (At least, not that I'm aware of.)

I've run into situations a few times where I needed the camera to follow an item, and I wound up exporting the Moho output to a 3D program instead. I wish we had more options for the camera to interact with bones, layers, etc. For that matter, I'd like to see Moho get a upgrade for camera/render output options common to other 2D and 3D programs. (i.e, deep color support for PNG and EXR, special channel buffers like motion vectors, depth, shape/style IDs, etc., etc.) Getting actual 3D lights in the environment would be useful too...not just for realistic lighting fx (like in After Effects and other compositing/3D/2D animation programs,) but as a controller for Moho's 2D shading fx. (You can probably kinda do that now but to be really practical, this needs to be a lot easier setup and edit.)

Sorry, for going off on a tangent there. It's all kinda related...to me anyway. :)
User avatar
hayasidist
Posts: 3492
Joined: Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:12 pm
Location: Kent, England

Re: camera following

Post by hayasidist »

You might try this: the layer you want to be followed by camera stays still (or at least mostly still); and the surroundings move around it.

In this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2g1o3a3tCw where the postvan runs along the road staying in the centre of the shot (with small up/down left/right motion) I have essentially 3 layers - the van; the road and foreground stuff; the background. The camera stays still; the van layer gets only the jiggles; the foreground layer moves fast (it's looping) and the background crawls past.

If you think of the moho camera and the layers / z as a digital version of the "old" multiplane cameras -- camera fixed and layers move -- that could help your animation design. I'd almost go so far as to say that camera motion as currently implemented is a "distraction".... BUT
Greenlaw wrote:I wish we had more options for the camera to interact with bones, layers, etc. For that matter, I'd like to see Moho get a upgrade for camera/render output options common to other 2D and 3D programs.
oh yes yes yes…

and a better way to manage assets in 3d space --- I did this a while back https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjFulEo2auw with camera motion in a "3d" environment created in AS9 (more about it here if you're interested http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... IC_ID=2177 ) ... it was hard work animating the camera - I actually used a spreadsheet to work out the x/z coordinates for keyframes to create the various orbits. That was the one and only time I took that approach...
Post Reply