I have watched many tutorials, and read the manual. That did not help one bit.
What I want is to fly through a corridor, with some parts of the walls reacting to my home made music track.
The walls ( red lights) reacting to my music track is what I got working.
After now days of trying, I can’t get the camera to do what I want.
I want it to follow a path (bezier curve) , but follow curve does not seem to work, camera keeps looking straight ahead instead of looking into the corner.
I am wondering if the red lights animation ( displacement ) is causing this?
Here is a vid of were I am stuck at.
At the start allot of weird stuff happening, does anybody have a clue on why?
From 0.33 sec in the vid it seems to start working like I want it, except for the part were the camera keeps looking straight ahead instead of following the curve.
Here is an second vid showing the animation I got working.
Use a Curve Mod on a mesh object, parent the camera to that and then keyframe offsets of the mesh object, that way the camera follows the direction of the curve, not just its path.
Noticed how the settings on the right totally get ignored.
I only added an empty, because this was suggested, but its not linked to the camera yet.
Can I share my file through this site, or do I need an external site?
I assume I then also will have to share the mp3, made by me with lmms ?
I had a quick look at your blend file, and it is what I am trying to do.
Edit 2
I see your are using a plane, I will have to investigate this.
One tutorial of Ducky 3D said, it would not work without adding a plane.
There is no plane in my file.
Edit 3.
Although I am having issues, I think your solution is the right one.
My camera is completely out side the corridor, but I can see it following the path.
The plane is at the right position in the corridor and also following the path, and rotating were it should.
I think I can figure out whats wrong, why there is an offset between the camera and the plane, its kinda funny camera is also on it side.
Might have to just rotate the plane on an axis or mess with the xyz settings.
I am closer then ever before I think, although camera still keeps looking straight ahead.
Your constraint is red, therefore broken, you have the deformation axis as Z and Up as Z, this you cannot do and you should not be using FollowPath - you should be using Curve Mod on the plane…
You cannot use a Curve Modifier on an Empty, that is why I use a Plane, you can only have Curve Modifiers on mesh objects.
Have another look at my solution, it uses a Bezier curve as the camera path, a plane object, which has a curve modifier and parent the camera to the plane object, then rotate it to the correct angle. The Camera, Plane Object and Bezier Curve should all share a common origin to make life easier for you.
I will have a look and make all origins the same, but I am not using follow path anymore.
I deleted that constrain.
I am doing what you suggested now. So I added a plane used a curve modifier on it and made the plane the parent of the camera. I notice the plane get deformed, but its following the path exactly as I want. The camera how ever seems to ignore the plane despite the parent relation.
In the last pic I posted you can see the camera settings.
I only selected the camera and the plane to make them better visible in the picture.
The plane is following the bezier curve the camera is not.
OK, the first vertex on you curve should be at the origin and then the rest should follow the path of you track. Your curve has the last vertex at the origin…
The Camera should be Parented => Vertex (Triangle), not object parent, then it will work… All these objects, Curve Plane and Camera should share a common origin.
Interesting, how can you tell the last vertex of my curve is at the origin?
I drew that curve from right to left. (in the direction of my corridor)
Gonna do some cleaning up though.
Delete camera, delete plane, delete bezier curve, and make them start at the same spot.
Might also move corridor to +X first.
Off topic:
( If only I can figure out how to get the transform gizmo, go to the center of mass, and not to the cursor.
Don’t know if I did this or its because the blender update I got, should be easy to fix.
Resetting to factory default did not fix it, but I will find it )
Putting the origins right (together) did help allot, but camera is still ignoring the rotation of the plane.
It makes my head hurt, that the plane does exactly what I want , but the camera that is parented ignores the rotation. ( it does follow the path )
Might delete that other animation, to see if that fixes the problem.
Then if all is working, add the second animation (red light reacting to my music track)
When I start a new project, and try it like you did, it works.
But not in my project. This issue keeps returning, what ever method I try. The camera refuses (in my project) to rotate around the bends.
Its why one question keeps returning in my head, is that other animation causing this issue ?
There is a large, weird offset introduced when I add the curve mod to your plane, I think something is screwed in your project.
Start of with a new project, make your Bezier, Camera and Plane and get that working, then Append the other objects from your original file, few at a time and save into new blend files, that will tell you where the problem lies, I don’t have time to do this for you today, try it and let me know.
Thank you very much, your reply makes me totally happy.
Last night I tried again, and also noticed that plane jumping, which does not make sense when I compare it with the file you had send, were plane curve and camera share the same origin.
I will start over with a fresh file, and this being my first blender project something like this is not totally unexpected to me. Although I have 2D and 3D cad experience ( and a bit of 3D studio max) and a map making program for a game, I should have gone with a straight corridor for my first project.
Learning allot I had been putting off. Snap with shift +S and origins.
Problem one , origins not lined up correctly. That is, I am 99% sure causing the offset.
So in main project deleted the curve.
In a new file still struggling but learning allot.
But for now now question, the rotation of the camera, is that done by keyframing ?
If so I am starting to see the light. Still studying the file you made.
I understand most, but my graph editor does not look yet like yours.
I will get there
Yes, bear in mind that cameras do not have the ability to apply rotations, so they will never return to 0,0,0 if you try to apply rotations as you should always do with mesh objects.
Although I can get them lined up, as soon as I hit the spacebar my camera tilts on its side.
And jumps back to the position set by the 3 vertices. Ignoring I had moved it to the cursor, which is at the center of the plane.
In your file this does not happen the camera stays at the center of the face.
Any idea what I am doing wrong ?
Maybe I found my problem, I am trying to rotate the camera with key-frames but need to rotate the plane with key-frames ?
Hello… been following (and learning from) this thread (being new to blender) and put this video together. Shows adding a simple path (Bezier curve) to a hall, adding a plane to follow that path, parenting a camera to the plane and also setting the origin coordinates of all three to make alignment easier. Through the process i had an issue with setting the cameras origin coordinates to match with the plane (the camera was offset quite a bit) and show how the issue was fixed.
Video: How to create a path through a hallway and have a camera follow:
Im not a Tutorial creater, nor am i fast with Blender so sorry for the pace of this howto.
Around the 2:20 marker in my little video, it shows how i whent about it (not saying this is the only or correct way to go about this, but it worked for me.).
No need to use keyframes for this. At the begining of the animation (frame one) just get everything aligned and rotated as you want it (with out any keyframes). For my little example,there are only two keyframes, the start of the plane (beginning of hallway) and the end of the planes movment (end of hallway), thats it, only two keyframe period.
Thank you, watched your vid, and I notice two things.
Your camera does what mine refuses to do. You are parenting different then me.
My camera does follow the path (plane) but does not rotate.
Also when I try to rotate the camera, with key-framing, something happens I did not understand, but I might now. I think I should move the cursor to have the rotation the way I want.
But I might not need to rotate the camera if I use your way of parenting.
Getting optimistic I finally found my problem.
My 3 origins are lined up correctly now, but were not when I started this topic. ( that was one of my mistakes)
Thank you both, I finally got it to work. ( the vid really helped )
Had a small issue with getting the parenting to work, but figured it out. Select camera then select the plane ( while holding shift) , then go through object, parent, vertex triangle.
I first used the parent option from the right side of the screen, and that gives a different result, causing allot of issues.
Right now not 100% happy with the rotation of the camera, but tweaking the path should solve that.
( I want it to start rotating a bit earlier, should be as easy as moving the bends of the path a bit )
Sorry I should have said that in my post, I never use the boxes on the Panel, I always select child, or children, SHIFT+Select Parent, CTRL+P => Parent Choice, and never have issues with this…
Also make sure you have enough resolution on your curve to stop camera jitter, I normally set this to:
The default setting of 12 is not enough… You can keyframe rotations of your camera to overcome, “looking around the corner” issues. When rotating any object to keyframe it, makes sure you do not have 3D cursor set, always:
You cannot keyframe rotations about the 3D cursor, if you want to do this, you should either move the object origin for meshes, or parent to an empty at rotation centre and rotate that. I disagree with @SidewaysUpJoe about key framing rotations of the camera by the way, it is best to have this set in the blend file, even if that is only on frame 1. Don’t rotate the plane by the way, leave it as is and alter the camera orientation. You can also alter and keyframe the location of the camera relative to the plane, raise it up, lower it down for example.
No need for sorry, you are trying to help me, and you did. (both of you)
To do: find out how I can speed the camera up ( might extent the corridor, that should speed it up, or add more path, so camera will return on its tracks.) , fix some caps, and add a bit more detail, to some places.
Fixing the caps should not be that hard, now I finally understand how snap works in Blender.
Would love to hire some devs, to make the snap function more 3D cad like, but I am starting to get used to the Blender way.
I did not have to rotate the plane, to have the camera lined up correctly.
Camera origin, the path origin and the plane all have their origins at 0,0,0.
That was one part were I got quite frustrated, I had everything lined up perfectly, then did parenting and boom the camera moved. Although I did understand why that happened, it was totally not what I wanted.
Its one aspect of Blender that is quite confusing when you’re starting.
Some commands reacted different depending on were you start a command from.
Also had allot of issues when somebody told me to move something. So I clicked move on the left site of the screen, but should press G for what I was trying to do. (snap related)
