Filming Tutorial

Before I started to film my animation, I wanted to practice the tutorial to make sure I knew how to film properly. I opened up a completely blank file just so I didn't accidentally mess anything up on my volcanic scene.

To start off with, I drew a line by going to the 'Create' menu, then down to 'Shapes' and chose 'Line'.

I then drew a line in one of the viewpoints. This line was going to be the camera path.

Once I had drawn the line, I wanted to create an object to film. I went to the 'Create' menu again and this time chose a 'Cone' from the 'Standard Primitives'. 

I then created a small cone in one of the viewpoints, which was positioned round about in the centre of the line I'd just drawn. 

Now that I had both my camera path and my object created, it was time to create a camera. To do this, I went to the 'Create' menu again and chose 'Cameras' and then 'Target Camera'.

I was now able to draw my camera onto the viewpoint on the line path I'd made, making sure to direct the camera directly towards the cone. 

I then went to the 'Motion' on the right in order to set the camera up completely.

 I expanded the 'Assign Controller' and clicked on 'Position' and the small icon just above it to open a the new position window.

When the new window opened, I selected the 'Path Constraint' option and pressed 'OK'. 

Back in the 'Motion' panel, I scrolled down to where it said 'Add Path'. I clicked on this, and then selected the line I drew earlier. 

As soon as I had selected the line, the camera immediately repositioned itself to the very beginning of the line. I could now press the 'Play' button and press 'C' to see the camera view.

I did play around with the Timeline slightly, just be adding more frames in etc. to draw the scene out a bit.