A sorta complex question on parenting

Deke

I'm setting up a shot in which a camera tracks with a walking character. I'd like the camera to track with and pan around the character. Now I could parent the camera to the character, but as the character is moving up and down as well as forward, the camera also moves up and down. So I cant just parent the camera to the character's hips or head or whatever. So I created a null and parented the camera to the null and tracked the null to the forward progress of the walking character. Works well so far, but ideally the camera would be parented to the character…so the question is if there is a way to parent one object to another, but have that parented object ignore the movement on a particular axis? This way the camera would move forward, but not bounce up and down as the character walked.

Richard Haseltine

Depending on how you animate, it might work to parent the camera to the figure (rather than a bone) - that would work if the movement through the scene was done by the figure, and the up and down and so on were done by the hip.

An alternative would be to use the Property Hierarchy to link the x and z translations of the camera to the figure's hip, but to leave the y purely local:

open the Parameters pane option menu (right-click the tab, or click the lined button in the top corner), select Edit mode, and make sure that neither Consolidate Properties nor Display Separate items are checked;

select the Camera and the figure's hip;

right-click on the camera's X Translation control, then from the menu click Show in Property Hierarchy;

select the figure's hip and find its X Translation control; drag that into the Controllers>1st Stage group under the camera's X Translation control;

repeat for the Z Control.

Deke

Thanks. I'll give this a try. I tried parenting both camera and null to the genesis 2 figure but for whatever reason this resulted in no movement…the camera and/or null stood still when the figure walked forward. So that's a bit of a mystery. I am working in Daz 4.7 on a mac and uses an aniblock for the walk cycle…transferring the moves from animate 2 to Keymate.

Richard Haseltine

On second thoughts, I should have said link the null's X Translate and Z Translate - then you have a rotation centre for the camera.