How do I make a series of moves, such as in the video I posted below, how can I make the camera pause, then move from the monkey to the torus?
I made the two objects, made an “empty” and placed it on the monkey, tracked the camera to the empty, and made a path for the camera to follow. But I want to make a movie where the camera pans in and out and side to side.
Should I make the camera move, or the objects? And do I use multiple cameras/paths, or is there some way to make the camera follow different paths over time? I can send the blend file, but I think anyone answering this should know it is very basic. Thanks in advance.
AFAIK, you can only have the camera following one path. You can use 2 cameras and 2 paths and switch between them, see here:
As to what the camera focuses on, you could use 2 empties, 1 on the monkey, 1 on the torus, and 2 track-to constraints on the camera, naming the 2 empties as the targets. set one constraint influence to 1, the other to 0, and key that value, then when you want to switch, set the one constraint influence to 0, and the other to 1. doing this over a few frames and the camera will pan from one object to the other.
Just hand animate the camera. Fussing with constraints can be time consuming. Use that time to just make your camera move. You could also try out my CameraPlus AddOn. It allows you to switch/cut between cameras at a specific frame #. Click on the link in my signature to find the related thread with the AddOn.
Overall I feel that hand animated camera look more natural than path driven camera moves.