A brilliant animation doesn't look like one if it's not filmed effectively. This chapter contains everything from animating cameras to composition to the camera tools in Maya 2013.

Framing and Lenses

ANIMATORS WORKING WITH MAYA 2013 will find that the camera tools are second to none. They have to be! Maya is the de facto standard of visual effects studios around the world. Visual effects supervisors need to work closely with cinematographers and be able to use the same terminology. If you are planning on a career in visual effects, it will behoove you to understand the fundamentals of camera work, and know how to frame your shot for the greatest impact.

Don't forget your staging! In all scenes it is imperative to make sure your action is staged nicely in order to allow for dynamic camera angles and lenses. Take the time to really practice interesting staging, with dynamic poses and compositions. A lot of times, experimentation will lead to the best choice; time spent “feeling around” the scene will pay dividends when your animation starts coming to life.

When your staging is complete, it's time to pick angles and lenses. Remember that a low angle can make a character seem formidable and aggressive. A high angle can make a character seem small and unassuming. Wide angle lenses distort perspective to an extreme degree, and are good for establishing the scene layout, moving through the scene, and for when you want perspective to play a role in composition. Narrow or “long” lenses remove the effect of perspective on your composition, are great for flattening the scene layout, and are generally not used for moving cameras because of the lack of depth.

Let's apply these principles in a scene that has been staged for us. It is a scene where a bully is about to clobber a smaller student at school. The poses have been set, and now it's time for us to create some cameras to get the right feeling in this scene.

1 Open framing_start.ma. Our characters have been posed, and it's time to set up this shot to get some dynamic camera angles.

2 Create a camera by going to the Create menu, and selecting Cameras > Camera. A camera will appear at the world origin. Let's switch to this camera by going to the Panels menu, and choosing Look Through Selected.

3 Our view changes to the new camera's perspective, and we're staring right into the bully's foot. Charming. Now let's move this camera to an angle facing the bully, and try to make it so that it shows off how big he is.

4 This is a good start. We've recognized that the bully should be seen from a low angle so that he looks very forebidding, and the little kid is being pushed close to the frame edge so he feels cornered. However, since the little kid is in between the camera and the bully, he's actually almost as big as the bully in composition.

5 Open up the camera's attributes by clicking the small Camera Attributes button in the top left of the panel. In the Focal Length attribute, put in 200. This makes the camera a 200 mm lens, far more telephoto and zoomed in than Maya's default 35 mm.

6 Now dolly the camera backwards by RMB dragging. Notice how the bully is bigger in composition, even though he's farther away? With this nice zoomed lens, the effect of perspective has been diminished and we've flattened the scene to keep the bully larger in composition.

framing_start.ma
framing_finish.ma

When working with multiple cameras in a scene, choosing with the Outliner and using Look Through Selected is the fastest way to move between them.

7 But we're still not ready to animate; we have to check what the scene is going to look like once rendered. Hit the Resolution Gate button in the camera panel. The box that appears is our render area, and I'm not happy with the bottom being cut off. Adjust the camera to get their hands in frame.

8 Now let's frame the “reverse” (a camera facing the other character in a scene). Switch back to the Persp view and create another camera, but this time create a Camera, Aim, and Up. This camera type has handles that allow us to keep its orientation well under our control.

9 Look through the new camera, and use the normal camera tools to frame the shot as above. You'll notice that the aim moves with your camera when you dolly, and that the camera rotates around it when you orbit, +LMB).

10 As I said before, the nice thing about a Camera, Aim, and Up, is that you are given controls to precisely control the orientation of your camera. Fine tune the framing of the shot by switching to a two-panel layout and moving the new camera's aim in a Persp panel.

11 In reality ALL cameras have aims, and ups. When you dolly a camera around in Maya, you are actually moving that camera's aim. In fact, it's possible to get this aim so far away from where it needs to be it causes trouble. In the Persp panel, select Look Through crazyCam.

12 It's almost the same angle as our other camera, so what's wrong? Orbit the camera and watch as it behaves totally unpredictably. Its center of interest is very far away, which can happen without you knowing it. The fastest way to get a camera to return to normal is to hit to Frame Selected, and then reframe the shot.

13 Switch back to camera2, and let's make the shot a little bit wider, to emphasize the bully's fist in composition. Set camera2's focal length to 25 and then dolly and pan to frame the shot like above. Don't forget that your cameras have their own undo buffer. and undo and redo camera movements.

14 Every once in a while we'll happen upon a framing that we love, but “Oh no!” we're looking through the Persp camera! No problem! Create a new camera, then Parent Constrain the new camera to the Persp camera with Maintain Offset unchecked. Voila, camera saved!

Pros can spot a default 35 mm camera from a mile away. Using a default camera homogenizes student work. In your personal work, distinguish yourself right away by choosing a new lens for your shots. It might even be a good idea to open the Create > Camera > Camera options box and set your default focal length to 50 or 60 just to be sure you won't accidentally follow the crowd!

Camera Sequencer

ONE OF THE BEST WAYS to create and manage a multi-shot sequence is using the Camera Sequencer tool. Introduced in Maya 2011, this tool has become rock solid in stability in Maya 2013. The idea behind this tool is to make it so that complex scenes with multiple cameras can be visualized all within a single Maya panel. In production, it is quite common for a sequence with very complex “hookups” (the animation that continues across an edit from one shot to the next) to be blocked in a single Maya scene and then sliced up into component shots. Certainly at the previz stage, when the director has to make camera placement and editorial choices with very little to go on, this tool will be extremely helpful. Now animators can create an entire sequence within a single scene file, and even do some basic editing with the director to get a better “feel” for a sequence as early in the film as possible.

1 Open up sequencer_start.ma. This scene looks familiar! I've extended the timeline just a little bit to give us more frames to work with.

2 Set your panel layout by going to Panels > Layout > Two Panes Stacked in the viewport menu. Now, in the bottom panel, choose Panels > Panel > Camera Sequencer. The Camera Sequencer will load in the bottom panel.

3 Let's now add all of the cameras to the sequence. Click on the Create Shot button in the top left corner of the Camera Sequencer. A shot will appear and its length will match the time slider.

4 Now right click on the added shot and click on Change Camera > camera1. This will designate camera1 as the camera for this shot in the Sequencer.

5 Create two more shots using the Create Shot button, and change their cameras the same way we just did, to camera2 and camera3, respectively. Your Camera Sequencer should look like this. Note that the traditional panel zoom and move tools work the same in this panel.

sequencer_start.ma
sequencer_finish.ma

You can export the edits you do in the camera sequencer as XML files to use in other software packages, like Final Cut. Just go to File > Export Editorial.

6 So, what exactly is going on? Just like layers in Photoshop, the shot that is on top of the Camera Sequencer will display. Move the top shot to the right by LMB clicking in the middle of it and dragging it to the right. Hit play on the bottom of the Camera Sequencer.

7 You may notice that camera2 is displaying up until the timeline gets to the beginning of shot1 in the Camera Sequencer, at which point it goes to camera1. BUT! Also notice that it goes back to frame 1 as well! We'll fix this now.

8 There are four numbers on a shot in the Camera Sequencer. The top row corresponds to the start and end frame in the scene file itself. If you move or scale a shot in the Sequencer, you are effectively editing non-linearly in time. The bottom row of numbers corresponds to the sequence you are creating. Hence in our shot right now, at f163 in our sequence, Maya is switching to camera1 and playing all of frames 1-215 at fast speed until the end of the sequence.

9 Unless you want to render multiple angles and takes of the same motion (called “coverage” in filmmaking) you are most likely going to want to keep linear time in your sequences. Manipulate the shots by grabbing the top row of numbers instead. Drag the top right number to 52 and hit play. The camera switches from camera1 at frame 52 and camera2 picks up the action.

10 We're going to lay out this sequence cinematically, but first let's split shot1 so that we can go back to our “master” shot at the end of the sequence. Drag the timeline in the Camera Sequencer to frame 26. Right click on shot1 and choose Split Shot.

When working on the lengths of shots within a cut, you can use the Edit > Ripple Edit option to automatically adjust other clips affected by the edit. For example, if you lengthen a shot in the middle, the following shots are moved over automatically to compensate for the middle shot's new length.

11 Lay out the scene like I have here. We go from camera1 to camera2 when Goon notices the person off-screen. Then we cut to the close-up of his eyes as he watches them pass. Finally back to the wide shot, camera1, to finish the scene. Make sure your shot and sequence frame numbers line up.

12 We need to get a feel for how the shot is going to render, so let's apply the Resolution Gate. Select camera1 in the outliner and open up the attribute editor. Change Fit Resolution Gate to Vertical. In the Display Options tab, check both Display Resolution and Display Gate Mask. Change the Gate Mask Opacity to 1, and Gate Mask Color to black, and change Overscan to 1.0.

13 If we want to submit this edit choice as its own movie file, it's simple and easy with Maya 2013. Click on Playblast in the Camera Sequencer Panel, and choose Playblast Sequence. Notice how Maya can now playblast Offscreen, meaning program windows that get in the way of the main Maya window will not interrupt the playblasting. Convenient!

14 A final update to this tool comes in the area of audio. You can add multiple tracks of audio in the Camera Sequencer itself. Just click on File > Import Sequencer Audio and choose a file. Another nice feature is the ability to link audio to a shot. Select a piece of audio and select a shot. Right click on the audio and choose Link Audio. Now the audio will match the edit of that shot.

When you are working in the Sequencer, you can not only time your sequence, but also strengthen the framing and composition of your shot by adjusting the camera live. Work with the attribute editor open, and manipulate the camera as it is loaded by the Sequencer. You could even create multiple cameras to start with and then wait to frame them until after they're in sequence.

UberCam

THE UBERCAM IS A BRAND-NEW addition to the Camera Sequencer that allows you to create a single camera that follows all of the edits of your sequence. This has a lot of potential for production purposes. first, having an animated camera means that you can watch your sequence without having to use the play controls in the Camera Sequencer; you can simply have the UberCam loaded as one of your panels and work this way. Second, rather than render multiple sequences at rendertime, the single UberCam can be chosen as your renderable camera, saving you time when it comes time to composite a sequence. The last benefit is scene overhead and manageability. In a very long sequence you may have a dozen cameras and 20 to 30 edits. With the ability to use this new tool to bake all of this data onto a single camera you can unclutter the outliner and get back to creating compelling performances with your characters.

We'll use the sequence we just finished to practice creating and manipulating UberCams.

1 Open ubercam_start.ma. Change a panel to the Camera Sequencer and hit the Frame All button in the top left corner of the panel. Remember, the normal Maya zoom and move controls work in the Camera Sequencer too.

2 Creating the UberCam itself is very simple. In the Camera Sequencer Panel, click on Create > UberCam. Maya will create the camera and it will show up in the Outliner.

3 Change the bottom pane from Camera Sequencer to UberCam. You can either select the UberCam in the Outliner and click on Panels > Look Through Selected, or simply click on Panels > Perspective > ubercam. Now you can watch the sequence playback in this panel while making changes to the animation.

4 The UberCam is not updated live, however. Change your panel layout to Four Panes in Panels > Layouts. Make the top left panel your UberCam, the top right panel camera3, and the Outliner one of the bottom panels.

5 Select camera3 and open the attribute editor. Change the focal length attribute to 120. Camera3's focal length changes, but the UberCam's does not. Since it is not a live connection, we have to recreate it.

6 Whenever you make a change to a camera position, focal length, or any animatable attribute, you must recreate the UberCam. Select and delete the UberCam from the Outliner. Change the bottom panel back to the Camera Sequencer and do Create > UberCam. Back in business.

ubercam_start.ma
ubercam_finish.ma

Rename your UberCams to represent edit versions, (e.g. edit_v1_cam, edit_v2_cam). You can then load your UberCams BACK into the Camera Sequencer to compare your current camera sequence against older versions, and really experiment to find the best result.

Animating Cameras

NOW THAT YOU ARE FAMILIAR with static cameras, it's time to learn some cheats on animated cameras. You will quickly discover that animated cameras really are a totally different animal.

For starters, audiences have become very savvy and you can't get away with unrealistic movement in your camera work. It stands out badly, and for potential employers demonstrates a lack of understanding of filmmaking. So we'll take a look at animating a camera in a realistic way, as if a person is holding it.

In live-action filmmaking, camera movement has been taken to some extremes; with helicopter cameras, underwater cameras, Steadicam, motion-controlled cameras, huge cranes and boom shots, directors have never stopped searching for new ways to move the camera. Our second scene is going to deal with animating a camera moving in an extreme way.

Within both these scenes, and all of your animation, you should bear a few rules in mind. first, know what kind of camera movement you are trying to recreate. Second, key the camera as little as possible. No matter what kind of effect you are trying to achieve, camera animation looks very choppy very quickly. Last, only move the camera with a purpose. Staging, composition, and story dictate whether or not the camera should be moving.

1 Open anim_hand_start.ma. Our familiar bouncing ball animation is going to benefit from an animated camera, as if the camera is hand-held. Prepare the scene by opening three panels, renderCam, Persp view, and the Graph Editor, and the renderCam's attributes.

2 One of the quickest cheats to make a camera look hand-held is to make it look like the camera operator “notices” the action. Let's achieve this with an animated zoom. Key the Focal Length at 35 on frame 1, and then key it at 60 on frame 36. Flat the tangents in the Graph Editor.

3 Now let's key a little bit of pan and tilt in the camera. Hit to key the camera on frame 1. Then on frame 24, frame the ball in the center of the camera by rotating the camera in the Persp window. Set a key again on frame 36, 43, and 52, with a VERY small amount of random rotation.

4 Another thing that really makes a camera feel hand-held is it lagging behind the action a little bit. Key the camera again on frame 61 and 68, and make sure the ball is leading the frame.

5 Set two more keys on 76 and 88, and settle the camera. Then one more key frame on 120. Do not flat this last tangent; animated cameras should never come to a complete stop, and certainly not right at the last frame.

6 Let's key one more quick zoom in. Key the Focal Length on frame 95. Now on Frame 105, key it at a value of 80. Flat this tangent.

anim_hand_start.ma
anim_hand_finish.ma

We flattened the tangent on keys set on Focal Length because on a real camera the zoom ring doesn't move unless it's being touched. When we flat the tangent, we are creating the illusion that the camera operator is letting go of the zoom ring.

7 Open anim_motion_start.ma. We're going to animate a dramatic camera move that is seemingly created by a camera on dolly tracks. First we need to set up a camera made for this kind of movement.

8 We'll need a camera with an aim to keep everything easy to control. Go to the Create menu, and choose Cameras > Camera, Aim and Up.

9 Our camera needs to move with its Up control, so let's group them together. Select the Camera and Up control, and press + to group them. Rename the group camMain_GRP, and center the pivot by selecting Modify > Center Pivot.

10 Next switch to the top panel, and select the EP Curve tool in the Curves Shelf. We are creating our camera's path, so create a nice half-circle curve like the one here by clicking points in the view. Finish your curve by hitting .

11 Now we attach the camera to the motion path. Select the camMain_GRP in the Outliner and then click the newly created curve1. Now click Animate > Motion Paths > Attach to Motion Path.

anim_motion_start.ma
anim_motion_finish.ma

Grouping is a great way to add multiple layers of pivot points to an object for easier animating. See the pages 108–111 for a cheat on multiple pivot points.

12 Let's frame up the bouncing ball. Select curve1 and translate it upwards in Y to 3.0. Also select the camera Aim and center it on the ball on frame 1.

13 Now let's follow the motion of the ball. Just like in the hand-held scene, we want to key the aim a little bit behind the ball. I have a key on frames 1, 51, 63, 73, 99, and 120. The fewer the better.

14 We were wise to group the camera before: now we can add a bit of camera shake on top of the path animation. Select the camera and, starting on f69, animate some camera shake, straight ahead, by moving the camera Up control subtly upwards and then downwards for a few frames.

15 Here is a closer look at the curves for the main camera movement.

For very dramatic camera moves, a path is a great way to go. The ability to visualize and edit the path is invaluable when doing sweeping movement. However, using Maya 2013's editable motion trails, you can technically recreate the same kind of feedback we saw using paths with keyframes alone. It will be interesting to see this new animation paradigm give rise to new ideas!

Finding Inspiration

by Eric Luhta

EVERY ANIMATOR KNOWS WHAT IT'S LIKE to get that “fire in your belly” feeling. After seeing something that you found so cool and awesome, you want nothing more than to run to your computer and create something just like it. whether it's a film, book, Tv show, piece of art, whatever, inspiration can come from many sources. As artists, we can fall into a rut where we forget what made us want to animate in the first place. experience is a catalyst for growth, but it can also erode the wide-eyed wonderment you had when you first saw that special film or show that made you say “i want to do THAT!” But staying inspired isn't difficult; it's just something that needs some attention every once in awhile. if creating is starting to feel commonplace and uninspired (and it happens to everyone at some point), then perhaps seeking out some of the following will help rekindle the flame.

Inspiration by:

Top 10

Everyone has a top ten list of their favorite animated films. when's the last time you watched one? what was it about them that made you so excited to animate? The films and Tv shows that define the art form for you should never be more than an arm's length away from your desk.

Films

Any film, from animated to live action to everything in between can serve to inspire your creative flow. it's true that many animated films are made for a specific audience range, but many animators fantasize about creating work outside the typical “family scope.” Documentaries, art films, sci-fi epics, slasher movies, anything outside the box for animation can give you new ideas and things to try. looking beyond genre, perhaps it's the way a film was shot that inspires new staging and composition ideas, or how it uses a soundtrack. leave no film-related discipline unturned when searching for something unique.

Other art forms

Move away from the time—based visual element we work in. Books, music, museums, graphic design, theater—any creative discipline can give you ideas that make for refreshing animation work. Different mediums engage your brain in different ways. if you haven't been reading much, you may find that a book opens some new doors for you, or that listening to some music you're unfamiliar with gives you visual ideas you wouldn't have had otherwise.

Process

You can be inspired by a particular artistic process or challenge. Never did stop motion? set up your digital camera, grab some action figures and give it a try! Create interesting limitations and see if you can meet their challenges… can you make a simple ball rig emote? make a cool animated gif with photographs from your family reunion? Animate only characters in the wingdings font and tell a story? Anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone or initially seems unreasonable is great process fodder.

Other artists

With the multitude of blogs, websites, artist sketchbooks, Art of books, interviews, DVD extras, and more, we have more information and inspiration available to us than any past society. make use of it! having an hour set aside each week to seek out new things you haven't heard of is a wise idea. you can watch shorts on youTube, read blogs, look through artist websites and communities, view photographs, watch other reels, anything that shows you what everybody else is doing. keep a folder or hard drive that functions as your personal inspiration library, and archive anything you find that you like. when you're not feeling your work, start browsing through your library and see where it leads you.

These are just a few of the ways you can keep your creative desire fresh and always hungry for more. maintain a steady flow of inspiration, and you'll never tire of challenging yourself and becoming a better artist. And who knows, you just may come up with the thing that inspires everyone else to keep on going. Best of luck, and happy animating!