Shaky Camera

[Hoptoad]

When animating an action scene with a lot of shaky camera-work, how do you prepare for it? Do you expand the background a few hundred pixels in both directions beyond the workspace, and do the camera-work in Moho? Or do you render the scene in Moho, then zoom-in on the scene in the editing software and do the camera-work there?

Furthermore, what would you do for extremely shaky camera-work combined with whip pans and tilts, such as the POV of a panicking character running over rough terrain? Any tips?

Thanks.

[Greenlaw]

For a basic 'shakey camera' effect in Moho, you can just group everything and shake the group. This can be easier than animating Moho's camera. If there is z-space between the layers inside the group, you will still see a parallax effect this way. Tip: Create this group specifically for this motion; you can still have subgroups with their own transforms applied.

In a 3D program, I target the camera to a null object and then add 'shaky' motion to the null. Handheld camera motion tends to move on Y more than X, and it rarely rotates on X. Moho can't target its camera to another item, so you'll need to animate the camera directly or animate the 'everything' group as described above, but otherwise, the camera motion suggestions apply.

Additional tip: if you want to see a parallax effect, it's not enough to only rotate the camera. The camera or environment (i.e., the group containing everything) needs to move in position to see this effect.

[MrMiracle77]

For shaky-cam in Moho, you do need a slightly oversized background, or you can zoom-in slightly on the existing scene. But the neat thing about Moho is that the camera movements are key-framable effects. So create a key frame for camera pan and camera rotate at the time of your choice, right-click the key in the timeline, and choose 'noisy' interpolation. You can then adjust the scale and amplitude to get the degree of shake you want. Shaky-cam is so easy in Moho that I prefer to implement it there instead of as part of an after-effect in a video editor.