Animating the camera with a curve

Creating a curve path

A camera can be animated to follow a curve path. Clicking the button in the toolbar opens the camera view. The view contains an Animation tab.

Opening the camera animation panel

The first table in the panel lists all the points in the curve. A curve point can be added with the corresponding "plus" button in the toolbar or via the contextual menu.

Note:

If a point is selected in the table, the new point is added just after it.

If the Add from observer checkbox is checked, the new point is created at the current position and orientation in the viewport, otherwise it is added following the previous points.

You can see that the curve is visible in the main view. The points can be moved using the manipulators (see Using the selection toolbar) or can be updated with the Set From Observer button in the upper toolbar which moves the selected point to the position of the viewport.

Viewing and modifying the curve in the viewport

The curve is a Bezier curve. Each point have two surrounding control points that define the aspect of the curve. They can be moved with the translation manipulator. The selected curve point can be rotated using the rotation manipulator or by moving the "lookat" position.

Note:

By default, the two control points move together. However, they can be translated independently by pressing the ALT key while moving the manipulator.

Playing the camera along the curve

Each point of the curve is associated to a timestamp (in seconds) visible and editable in the second column of the table. The timestamp controls when the camera will reach the point during the animation starting from the first point.

When checking the Auto timestamps option, the timestamps of all the points are calculated automatically to reach the camera speed specified in the Camera speed property. Otherwise they must be defined manually.

The Timeline slider moves the camera along the curve path following the timestamps of the points. When moving it, you can visualize the camera gizmo progressing in the viewport.

By checking the Apply camera property, moving the timeline or playing the animation will effectively move the current view in the central viewport.

Note:

The Tangent Orientation checkbox cancels the curve points orientation by following the direction of the path.

Finally, the last toolbar contains a Play and Stop buttons as well as a button to move the camera to the selected point.

Exporting the camera video

NDunes provides the ability to export the camera animation shots to be used outside of NDunes as frames and video. See the Rendering a camera animation topic.

Render menu

Controlling the camera