Activity 4: Camera Motion

T-HFND-009-017

Create advanced camera motion and learn how to add a Camera layer, navigate the Node view, and animate pegs. Learn more about the Node Library view, Add Keyframe, Timeline view, Set Ease for Multiple Parameters, Camera hold, Set Stop-motion Keyframe and easing.

Material

To complete this topic, you will need the following from the sample material you downloaded:

  • MO-HFND-009/07-camera-multiplane scene - version you worked on in the previous topic

Video Transcript

Hey, welcome to the third part of this tutorial about multiplane and camera. In this video, we will see how to create and animate a camera.

So let's start right away.

In this case, we can see that we already have a camera and we see that both in the Timeline view, as well as the Node view. Be aware that the Node view is only available for those of you who have the Premium version of Harmony.

Let's have a look at what we have here.

This is pretty much is the final result that we want to obtain. So there's quite a few keyframes. You can also see that in between those keys there's a nice ease-in and ease-out. You can feel it when the camera travels through the scene. And so we'll be working on that.

Let's start by deleting the current camera peg and camera that we have there.

To create a camera, we can either go over the Add Layer button and then click on it, hold it and then click on Camera. Or you could also go to your Node Library window and then type in "camera" in the search bar and then drag it to your network. I'm going to go ahead and delete that last one and head back to the timeline. And then we're going to add a peg on top of it to be able to animate it.

To add a peg, click on the desired layer and then click on the Add Peg button. In the timeline, I'll [collapse] the peg in the timeline and then I'll click on the first frame and click on the Add Keyframe button. You can also press on [F6].

Then I'll go further down in my timeline, let's say to frame 60 and move the camera to create... This is going to create a keyframe automatically. I'll go further down, move the camera again and maybe have it zoom out a little bit. Then keep on going.

And now let's have a look at it.

Okay, so I have a pretty linear movement. The spacing in between the keys are the same. I think I also want to add a still on the light pole. So, let's go do that.

I'll just go to the keyframe where I see my light pole and I'll copy it and past it further down. Right, so, this is how I'm having a hold on a movement.

Since there is no longer any movement between those two keyframes, I'll just go remove the interpolation by clicking on the keyframe where we set into this position. And then I'll click on the Set Stop-Motion Keyframe button.

Time to set some ease.

I'll click on the first keyframe and then click on Set Ease for Multiple Parameters. What I see then is a graph. So on the X-axis, I see the number of frames, so that's representative of the timeline. And then as we can see, there's a keyframe on frame 1, right? And that's what we see both in the graph and the timeline. And then there's another keyframe, past the frame #41, which is actually on #6. So you can see the relation between the timeline and the graph.

Now if I am to pull on the red handle towards the right like that, it means that I'm actually having the camera be closer to the position it has on frame #1 for longer. If I'm to pull it downwards though, it means that it's quickly going to get out of its original position. So I'll just put it back there and go do something similar to the other keyframes. Now we can Apply and Close and have a look at what we just created.

You'll be able to readjust the ease at any time.

That's it for this video.

So in the next and last one, we will move our animated character through the scene, through the 3D space that we just created and have it interact with the background layers.

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Time Estimated 20 mins

Difficulty Level Beginner

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