Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
The camera is now attached to the locator for position only. This means that no path alignment or roll on
the locator will affect the camera. Now you will need to get the camera to point at the bottle. You could key-
frame the y-axis rotation (to keep the camera faced in the right direction) and the x-axis rotation (to keep the
bottle vertically in view), but that will leave it with some roughness and take a lot of time to fine-tune. Our
purpose here is to do this job as simply as possible. To get the camera pointed at the bottle, do the following:
1.
Create a new locator.
2.
Position the locator in the middle of the bottle mesh.
3.
In the Items list, select the camera.
4.
Shift+click the new Target locator.
5.
Click the Direction option (from the Constraint section of the Animate tab).
The camera now points at the bottle (the locator, actually), no matter where the camera moves. Scrubbing
the timeline at this point will provide a good, smooth animation with no awkward tilting issues.
Figure 13-24
shows frame 45, which was problematic in the previous version. The alignment is good, and the bottle is
perfectly in view.
Figure 13-24:
With the camera targeting the locator, the alignment of the camera is now smooth
throughout the sequence.
Different projects will call for different animation styles and needs. Learn and internalize these simple
methods, and they will help you to quickly add some motion to your next project.
Rendering Sequences and Composing in After Effects
Once your motion is complete and you are ready to create a finished presentation, you will need to render
out the frames. Choosing the Render Animation option from the Render menu accesses sequential frame
rendering. The subsequent dialog box allows you to choose the starting and ending frames and the type of
files to be created.
