animated camera toggle

I working on a little simulation/micro-management/rpg type project and have decided I’m going to need two camera perspectives. One being the typical third person camera for the rpg elements and the other being a pseudo top-down camera. the top down camera won’t be perpendicular to ground in a 2d fashion but rather angled slightly, zoomed out, and not reliant on the character to determine it position. It would only move along the x and y axis at a fixed z-distance from the ground with no rotation. Neither camera is difficult to set up, but then my desire for aesthetics jumps in and torments my brain…:smiley: I’d like to animate the toggling of camera positions. Say I’m in third person wandering around and decide to switch cameras: The camera should zoom out from my character to the predetermined z-height as well as rotate to it’s fixed “north facing” direction. Upon reaching its new position, the arrow keys (or other controls) should now respond to move the camera instead of the character. When I’m done using the top down camera it should zoom and rotate back down to the character, who could be standing on the other side of the game map now since camera/character are not linked in top-down view, all in a fluid manner.

I’m absolutely stuck on how to set this up. Anyone got any ideas for me?