I’m coming from 15 years of Maya experience, so doing this is easy in Maya, for me. And banking around turns is an option.
I’m trying to learn how to do this on Blender now. But, like a dozen other things I am trying to do on Blender with limited to no success, this one simple thing is proving to be frustrating.
I draw a Bezier curve on the grid. I select the camera, add a Follow Path constraint, select the curve, check the follow curve option and animate path, but it doesn’t follow the path. Instead, I get a blue dotted line that extends from the camera object , the end of which moves along the path curve. I’ve been scratching my head for two nights on this. I tried playing with the axis options both forward and up, and nothing happens other than the camera flipping.
Why is it so hard to do this simple process, which should take no more than 8 seconds to set up as is the case when I did this in Maya. Why doesn’t it work as expected on 2.91?
select the cam and it alt-g to clear it’s location.
X rotation of the camera should be 90°
It takes me 5 seconds to set it up, should I conclude that Blender is more efficient than Maya ?
Or maybe it’s just that they are 2 different apps and you just need time to adapt…
you need to have a bezier curve or circle that you can shape the way you need.
Then you place en empty where you want the camera start and parent the empty to the curve using curve follow path
Then you place the camera at the empty location and parent it as object
In the curve modifier you set the axis for the camera as you need or you cant point the camera to a specific object using a track to constraint
That should work…
I made a new scene and couldn’t get it to work. Sometimes the camera would not move at all, but the blue dashed line would follow the path of the curve at the far end, while the near end would remain stationary at the camera.
Another time I restarted Blender and tried again, and got different, but equally frustrating results–the camera moved, but it moved away from where I’d set it on the path curve, and was looking sideways to the curve and moving along it. None of the axis options would make the camera point along the curve.
Also, in Maya, I can make the camera bank as it goes around the curve by clicking the “bank” option under Maya’s Motion Path Attributes. Didn’t find such an option in Blender. https://youtu.be/LloLUDl401Q
After you have followed the directions above and have the camera following the curve…you can add a Dampened Track Constraint to the Camera and have it target the curve or any other object in the scene, such as an empty the with the right axis selected it will always point at that object…
This procedure at least (though I will never remember how to do this again) puts the camera on the path, though not aiming precisely DOWN the path (it’s a little tilted to the left a few degrees), but it still does not tilt in the manner that an aircraft tilts as it goes around a turn.
Why this process should take six or seven steps just to follow a path is beyond me. I guess that’s why Blender remains in the realm of hobbyist 3D experimenters rather than taking the commercial market for itself. It’s about efficiency and ability to remember simple procedures. Too many simple tasks in Blender require one to be a rocket scientist level of genius to figure out.
In three years of following tutorials and using Blender, I’ve not done anything major in it yet because of “stupid” limitations like this. Frustrated.
As for adding the Dampen track constraint after doing the other steps, all this does is make the camera flip over midpoint of the travel along curve.
Edit mode on the curve - open the side panel. Item tab has Mean Tilt.
Edit the points to give the lean you want. Use the overlays dropdown menu to show curve normals so you can see the twist.
Go into the Curve settings >> Animation and set the number of frames it takes.
It is set up in a messy fashion because of blenders game making history. You can set up multiple objects and an offset camera to all follow a curve. AKA Car racing.
Its one of the many things left to die a slow death as blender converts to Geo Nodes for all animation.
I discovered Alex on Story on You Tube a couple of days back doing Blender tutorials - all with animation. Works at Playstation… Clear proof that Blender is a wee bit beyond hobbyist. But your UI complaints are definitely valid. There definitely needs to be more developers with a lot of non blender experience.
I had to point out to someone yesterday that with all the separate panels in the side panel & properties window you can right click their individual headers and pin them - so they stay visible. I think as you change the workspaces along the top of Blender then different thing should get pinned - to actually create useful layouts. It is an obvious solution to a long term UI problem - things being scattered all over the UI that should be together when being used.
The Active Tool Settings Space in the Properties window should group the basic Curve and Camera settings when you select them both. It is wasted on transform options most of the time - but well used if you are in Texture paint and other modes… It should be better used.
Now this is how you get all these hobbyist 3D experimenters on board to help you solve your problem !
I get your frustration, I don’t mean blender is perfect, but it’s basically how professional DCC are, blender being one of the simplest to use.
Blender is build around discoverability to a degree, you can take the app and find stuff by yourself without any documentation. But this is very limited especially when it comes to advanced feature, which camera following a path is.
It is expected that you read the manual, watch tutorials in order to learn these techniques. And it’s the same in any professional 3D software, even worse in many cases.
Some software are simple enough so you can learn them while using them, here for the most part it’s not the case, it as more to do with the craft in itself than blender particularly.
I’ve searched on and watched a half dozen tutorials on camera follow path, but none of them explain how to make it bank/tilt around turns in the path.
This is a BASIC capability in 3D software like Maya. And banking around turns is a check box item.
I’m trying to make motion graphics and art, but technical issues interrupt my creative energy at every step. It’s hard to make art when you have to put on your science hat and try to find a work around for every problem.
Even in cases where someone had been able to provide a complex process to get a job done, I cannot remember it a few days later because it was unintuitive.
I can’t even get a camera onto a path and looking down the path easily in Blender. I have to do a lot of manual tweaking and then it’s not quite lined up perfectly, so I get a crooked angle as the camera moves.
In Maya, the camera follows the path precisely and even the frame numbers are on the path so I can see at a glance how fast my camera should move.
I should be able to make art without spending 98% of my time hunting on the internet how to solve why this or that doesn’t work. That’s why I have produced almost nothing in 3 years of Blender. All of my portfolio is in Maya, as I was productive in just one year. Although to be fair, I did have formal classroom training at AutoDesk 23 years ago. There seems to be no formal training for Blender and there is just a hodgepodge of tutorials on Youtube, but if you’re not making a doughnut, you’re going to run into problems.
Not sure I understand how to use this file. Do I copy the camera from this and paste it into my own project? Doesn’t seem to be in the paste buffer from Asset Manager.
I spent all day experimenting and trying hundreds of methods. I finally found this Tilt parameter on the path curve. None of the youtube tutorials ever touch this topic.
As can be seen from this screen grab, the title value at this point is set to 51° and the camera is tilting into the turn at that point. It’s not automatic, but it gives the effect.
Also, you have to ALT-R and ALT-G the camera to clear location and rotation data before putting it on path or it will be offset in weird ways.
Fat chance I’m going to remember all this in a month from now!
