Camera Rigg for Maya

[DarkBane]

What exactly do you mean by camera rig.

Is there some special type of movement you want to do with your camera, or just standard stuff.

Please provide some details of want you want to do.

[WannaBe_80z]

i am also new and want to know aobut this how can i like set up a scene and then like rig a camera to a path or something and animate it like a flythrough to like practice the camera basics? is it easy have any tuts on it? thanks

[DarkBane]

If you know how to animate anything else in Maya, then you know how to do basic animation on a camera. If you don't know how to animate anything in Maya, then grab a book, or look through the help files. It's not hard to learn. Once you understand the basics, then try to apply that knowledge to animating a camera.

If you're looking to animate a fly-through or something, then check out Motion Paths, otherwise, look in a book first.


Good Luck

[kiaran]

Just select the camera. Turn on the 'animate' button. (Lower right of UI). Then you need to look through the camera you want to animate to click on the last menu in a viewport and choose panel>camera1. Then move camera into first position. Press the 's' key to set a keyframe. Then move the time slider and the camera into next position and press 's' again. Continue setting key frames to animate your 'flyby'. Just play around with it and it'll click for you.
:)

[TheWraith]

turn on the animate button? isn't that MAX?

[mental]

heya modi, good question.

there's been a large gap in tutorials when it comes to setting up a solid camera rig in maya (as well as other programs):

path animation is adequate for simple scenes but quickly falls when you need more complex movement. that's where a camera rig comes in.

in a basic camera rig you're trying to replicate the attributes of a real, physical camera. this means that a camera has to be able to do the following:

- tranlate
- pan
- tilt (also known as roll)

to do this you will need a camera that has these attributes to control.

so to get started go to Create > Cameras > Camera, Aim and Up. this will give you a camera with two extra attributes 'camera aim' (which will equal your pan) and 'camera up' (which will serve as your tilt).

immediately select you camera and go to window > general editors > channel control. in the 'keyable' tab, set all of the translate, rotate, scale and visibility values to be nonkeyable. then in the same menu go over to the 'locked' tab and again set the translate, rotate, scale and visibility attributes to locked. this step is crucial as it keeps the user from moving the camera from the rig you're about to set up.

with the camera now set go into the top down view and with the EP curve tool set to linear, create 3 different curve shapes (a triangle, a circle and a square). name the triangle 'Translate', the circle 'Pan' and the square 'Tilt'. assign each of these shapes it's own layer and give each layer a distinctive color. also remember to perform a freeze transform and delete the history of all three shapes.

again you will need to lock attributes for these shapes:
select the Tilt (the square) and make all attributes unkeyable and locked except the rotate Z value.
select the Pan (the circle) and make all attributes unkeyable and locked except the rotate Y value
select the Translate (the triangle) and lock the all the scale and visibility attrbutes. make sure you leave the translate and rotate attributes alone.

with that complete parent the camera and the 'camera up' to the Tilt shape. then select and parent the 'camera aim' to the Pan shape. finally parent the Tilt shape to the Pan and parent Pan to the Translate shape.

and there you go an easy camera rig which give you relatively good control for most situations.

[EDIT] also i usually keep a saved maya scene with this camera setup handy so that i can just import it into the working scene when i'm ready to start animating.

[EDIT 2] one more point to add: when animating this rig you start by keyframing the Translate shape value for the entire animation, then go back to the start and key all of the Pan shape values and finally go back a third time and key the Tilt shape. don't try and key all three values in one shot.

further more... remember that you are setting keys for all three shapes (translate, pan and tilt) not just the translate shape. to only animate the translate shape would defeat the whole purpose of the camera rig which is to give you exclusive control over all three values.

hope that helps
-mental :surprised

[modi]

Wow, thanx a ton man, that was really helpfull. I'm starting animation on my short film and wanted complete control over the camera. Thanx again.
"don't try and key all three values in one shot." don't quite understand why i can't key all three values. I animate strictly pose to pose and am used to having an "ALL" button which would key everything animatable in the scene. cheers - Modi.

[kiaran]

turn on the animate button? isn't that MAX?

Sorry old habits:rolleyes:

[modi]

just another quick question, i built the camera rigg but was wondering where to put the pivot points of the triangle, square and the circle. I'm guessing the traingle should be in the center of the camera but what bout the other 2. cheers - Modi.

[mental]

a camera rig is like a gyroscope. the translate, pan, and tilt nodes as well as the camera should all share the same pivot point. just like in modeling, it would be ideal to create the camera rig (camera & shapes) on the origin.

here's an example of a camera rig i whipped up. should have used different shapes but... ah well. all objects have their pivot at the same point.

http://mywebpage.netscape.com/SoulJack3r/CameraRig.jpg

as far as animating the camera, i stick by what i said earlier: key the tranlate, pan and tilt in three separate passes. you can't really tell how much to pan if you don't have your translates set and you can't get the right tilt on the camera until you get the pan down. posed based animation is good for character animation but it doesn't really work well with animating a camera.

then again... if the camera is just moving in a straight line from point A to point B then sure key all three at one once but if you're planning on animating a complex shot; key the nodes individually.

-mental :surprised

[Nicool]

http://www.highend3d.com/files/dl.3d?group=melscripts&file_loc=CameraRig-v1.0-.mel&file_id=238

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