Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
A good way to get a clear idea of the effect of the tangent on the motion is to start playback and then
adjust the curve while the animation plays. Creating a balance between the tangents takes a little fine-tuning,
but taking the process one attribute at a time will help simplify the process. It should be noted that this cam-
era move could have been adjusted with changes to the Rotation channels while leaving the Position chan-
nels with linear interpolation. As a good practice, fine-tune the camera move by using the rotation curves
instead of the position ones. This will allow you to see how fine changes in curves can make a big difference
in your animations.
Setting Up Motion Paths and Constraints
Keyframes offer a good, straightforward solution for setting up animation by allowing you to set and frame
important points. At times, however, creating a perfectly smooth motion path is key to the success of a se-
quence. In these cases, creating a path for objects to follow can help speed up the process of creating smooth
animation. Animating on curves offers a number of interesting possibilities for creating fluid motion and
even interpolation between start and end points. Additionally, this will allow you to create camera moves
that would be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve with keyframes alone. Perhaps best of all, creating this
style of animated motion is quick and easy once you have a firm grasp of the process. With a little practice,
you will be able to create, edit, and refine a motion path in a matter of minutes.
The first stage of this process is to create a curve to use as the animation path. Curves are created from
the Curves palette, which is located in the Geometry menu. When selected, the Curves palette will appear
(see
Figure 13-19
). This palette contains a lot of options, but we will concerns ourselves with the first three
in this case.
Figure 13-19:
The Curves palette
