Separating the keyframes for x,y and z pos. via a camera rig such as this is a great way of making smooth camera movements. But because the keyframe data is stored in effects parameters rather than postion values, you have no visible motion paths, and hence animating along irregular curves is difficult.

My current method is to simply parent the camera to a null and animate Y rotation and usually one position value (Y for a ‘landscape’, Z for a ‘wall’) on the null. I then animate X and Z rotation and the other position values on the cam itself.
This corrects the ‘wrong’ rotation calculation order, and leaves me with a 2D motion path and a separate ‘trim’ control. It’s far from perfect, especially when I need a truly 3D motion path which swoops in all three planes.
AE CS3 now shows you separate xyz values in the graph editor, a slight help, but you can’t keyframe them separately which can still cause untold headaches. In C4D you can make a Y only keyframe, go to top view and you can’t move it - it has no X or Z value to alter. Yet go to perspective view and you can slide it up and down, altering the motion path shape. The control handles behave similarly - you can’t drag them into a plane that isn’t also keyframed (hope that makes sense).

Or maybe I should just do all my animation in C4D. I’ve only been using it a month and it’s helping me see a few shortcomings in AE’s implementation of 3D.

Steve

Glad you tracked it down!

Dale

I seem to be limited on the Slider Control range. I’m going to send that one off to aebugs@adobe.com.

I could, however, block the max and min values in the expressions. Should the max and min match the range of the slider control in the sample project?

The layer name should be Camera Control, can you check if you’ve got source name selected instead of layer name? Jeff pointed that one out to me on another script and I did a big Doh! If it still isn’t named correctly, I’ll check the script, but I’m pretty sure I can change the Null name if necessary.

Dale

Picky picky… thanks for rising to the challenge!

-Stu

I’ve added the pointOfInterest expression.

I see what you mean about the animation preset being a pain. I’m not at my usual workstation today, so this is a default install, I’ll have to get everything configured soon.

Dale

You know, my rig will still work with Auto Orient set to Point of Interest (the default) — just add this expression to the Point of Interest stream:

position + [0,0,100]

Man, your screenshot of the sliders reminds me of how much I HATE those stupid Animation Preset pop-ups. They are so lame. I always turn them off — see:

http://home.earthlink.net/~prolost/iHateThePopUps.png

-Stu

Thanks for the feedback. You’re right that’s a pretty decent workaround. I’ll make that change.

Dale