[Maya] - Camera Following an object

[boeserWolf]

hm ... i would parent or group the camera with the object ... that would be the most easy way ... imo ... though this wont work when you plan to rotate the object during the animation. In this case i would connect both with the connection editor.

[Keithtron]

Well, you will want to use a 3-node camera (Cam, Aim, and Up). The easist thing to do would be to Point Constrain the camera's Aim object to the marble, but the camera would be bouncing back and forth as the marble went down the helix, which would probably be pretty annoying.

To avoid the annoying bounce, you could position the Aim in the center of the helix and use either a Set Driven Key or the connection editor to link the marble's Y translation to the Aim's Y translation. I'm not on my computer right now, so I can't open Maya and give you the step-by-step at the moment, but if you need more help setting up that relationship just let me know.

Once you have the Aim linked to the marble animation, you can animate the camera position separately if you'd like, and it will always be pointing toward the marble.

Oh, and when working with a 3 node camera, it's usually easiest to group the Cam and Up together, and then have that group and the Aim under the main camera group, if that makes sense. That way you can animate the Cam/Up group and keep the 2 elements together nicely.

Good luck!

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