Cineversity

Hi,

Looking for a Walk-Through tutorial of a outdoor scene.
Virtual Walkthrough better or camera animation better….?

From basic…. I am not animator.

Thanks,
Imran.

Hi Imran,

With an initial focus on Cinematography (telling a story) or how to animate the camera “technically”?  On the end, you want to please your audience.

For me, the idea behind Cinematography is to translate a story into a images and to lead the audience eye. With this in mind, the camera move become motivated, and that needs then the skills of an operator or animator.
If the camera mis moved without motivation other than for effect, that works perhaps great for a short time, but not for a long. Anyway, the key is to guide your audience inside an flow of information. To get the most out of each image, one has to understand how many layers of information is possible in a given situation, and how much the audience can “read” this. In other words, knowing your audience, or make one ideal audience up.
With this any camera move becomes more of a puzzle to solve than pure effect. How to animate then the camera, based on a given intention, is then more knowledge based than anything else. However, one can not leave one step out and expect constantly great results.

Let me know what part you like to focus on first. I’m certain we will find some answers. (I do cinematography since a while and got several awards for it, 3D animation as well practical)

The best start is to take a little camera and capture some clips outside, then wait a few days, and watch the clips with fresh eyes. Do they work for you anymore, if not what has changed. Try to edit these into short movie. You will encounter a little bit more what Cinematography means. As without knowing what can be edited, any take from your shoot will be less in value.

All the best

P.S. here is a little play list
http://www.cineversity.com//vidplaylist/camera-work

The Cinematography series is represented only with part one in the list, but I suggest to watch it one time through. (May I brag for a moment? Yes?! OK, good. The Cinematography series got three Awards alone, so even it is basic and an advanced series should have been followed already at one point, this first series is a must know base to start, from where I look at it.
The advanced series would include much more, but as long as no request is given, it might rest in my drawer only. I studied film/photography, so I’m more than happy to share. There is so much more, and it allows to see movies on a much higher level as bonus )

All other parts are single tutorial suggestions, often in presentations – certain times apply. See the time table below the tutorials to make your pick

However, I was thinking about a “Base/BootCamp” curriculum about animation over the last few days, and how the logical flow of information should be. The tutorial list is not a representation of it.
Given all the questions I got over the past fourteen years about animation, I tend to have my very own ideas about what is needed. In any way, I like to use mostly the F-Curve to fine tune a given motion, and certainly do not use any plug-ins or other helpers.
It is maybe like in photography, the auto-mode keeps people visually illiterate, while the results might be nice, as an artists this must feel like a constraining jacket. 
Anyway, it certainly belongs into the discussion about what your main targets are. If you want to be great in camera work, toss auto stuff and plug-ins as far as possible away from your camera work. If you like to have this only a tiny fraction of your work, use it and keep your “focus” (pun intended) on anything else. I know, I sound often like a math teacher, but skills set you free as an artist, dependencies on “stuff” (vs skills) will naturally not.
My idea is of course my own perspective to things, and I know it’s more fun to push just a button. But if it is that simple, everyone can do it, and the work becomes logically average. With specific added skills the same time investment during work will elevate your results, and at the same time the motivation to push for more will be increased enormously.

Let me know if you have any question, I’m very happy to look into it.

Cheers

Thanks for that. I got reference video, you have any upload link, I dont want to show that at forum. I hope it will b easy to understand.

I will build the models and environment and I think its camera animation, camera moves around the buildings.

Regards,
Imran.

Hi Imran,

Video sounds perhaps large, you can put it on YouTube and keep it private, while send me the link. If it is small (e.g. 100MB), check your Private Message, I will send you an upload link.

My tip, use the motion tracker in C4D and track the video. Then have a look at the curves and try to create the camera move from Memory. To just copy is is meaningless if you like to grow skills.

Cheers

Hi, Uploaded at you link.

Thanks.
...

I got your file, thank you, Imran.

I guess the technical part of how to keyframe and move a camera is understood from the tutorials. If there is a question left, please ask in the Tutorial Forum. Or, just define what you would like me to do after I have watched the clip now a few times. There are so many ways to respond, but it would be easier you get more specific. Anyway, I will go through the points that would keep me busy getting a concept for the camera work.

The normal walk through has a typical problem, it misses a main actor and a story. I did a scientific study over three years about this kind of animations. This main problem collides normally with the audience, as the missing main actor or action leads to that the audience starts to develop their own ideas what they want to see next. But the camera can go only one way. There is no one size fits all, everyone might want to see something else as next.
The only option in avisual way to solve it is to give a main actor to the scene, like one of those animations did, back in time, by adding a butterfly, and followed it.

Other than that, movies have many layers, and the visual part should be normally the strongest. Based on the needs of a scene, some layers, e.g., sound or music, can be come more important for a moment. The least favorable are insert cards or words. Normally that shows, that there was no idea to translate the content into visuals. Anyway, a narration (off scree) is typically the remedy, not a good nor great one, but it supports the flow. If the text is given for the narration the camera can take it as a motivation and if done well, the narration looks like documenting the visuals, not forcing it.

Camera work, causes many questions, and only an individual concept can create a good use of screen time.

What is the main question about camera work and this context?
If that is your work, what would you like it to be. (What is not as it should be?)
What are the targets?
What mood do you like to create?

Camera work is not just a do this do that. It is a “language”, and I certainly know how it feels when one gets instructions that don’t really represent the “inner visuals” one has: Typically, that ends in a disaster. Have been there, even after studying film and photography at the University of the Arts , Berlin, for six years. I had to learn again. (To not think that I got it while the first visual popped up, [sic], communication is more, it is a circle) Today, I certainly would avoid any art direction, if that is not communicated clearly, best with a storyboard.

BTW, I don’t do critiques here, and I try to avoid to have that here. Critiques need a safe space, out of the public, a safe mentor environment. Public critiques might bite you in the future, so I don’t want to be part of it, nor support this. So, I got your set up, buildings and context, what would you like to have on the end? What is already a must. Is there text that is given to a certain time, that must have a specific visual?

Again, camera movement is an very intense language, just moving it or have it dynamically jump from one point to another might look cool, but is it delivering the mood, the content and the Cooperate identity, etc, etc,

There is no right or wrong, until you know what the shot should be. If anyone tells you do this or that, without these question, well, that’s questionable

Last but not least: Is the requirement a single shot? It seems to be that people miss a lot of opportunities avoiding to edit and cut, or do a montage. Long camera takes can be significant, sometimes. Most of them misses the point and waste everyone’s time: Audience time, click - next channel. End of story.

The idea of a movie vs an Image is that the previous set up in a movie will impact the next, and so on. Oc=f course one like to frame the main object in a appropriate way, in tension to the context or in harmony (avoid getting stuck with rule of thirds and stuff like that, it only locks you in a cage, there is so much more). Check for example “Kuleshov”. All in all, a movement without motivation is just a gimmick, if at all anything of value, hence why I have asked so many questions.

Any scoring given?

Let me know.

Cheers

Given some impression I had during the last questions, here is a different answer, perhaps more fitting. Let me give you my background in this, at least some corner stones of it. I bought my first SLR four decades ago, and my first video camera over three decades ago, since two+ decades I have received film-making awards from all over the word. But I certainly have not the slightest impression that I’m done learning and refining my craft. Not at all. Even after I got my first Patent Pending here in the US for an optical device.
My dissertation is about Computer Animation, and the more I know, the more I’m motivated to learn. It is a fantastic field to be in. I really love it. Practically or 3D/4D, or combined.

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Animation is change over time. Animation is to bring life to something. Animation is the understood observation of ideas, reality or both and its representation of it.

If the Animation is needed as in your example, then a simple Align to spline animation might already do it. There are no wrong camera moves by itself, there is only a camera move that supports the floor of information or is against it. Flow of information or progressing the story is used here for the sake of simplicity exchangeable. A still camera can be more powerful. But as usual, film lives from the part before and after. That needs to be understood. To just make a long monotone movement is rarely the solution.

The key positions of any animation are the crucial part. In the old days (BC: before computer) the parts between were called “The Inbetweening”. In 3D/4D animation this is mostly replaced by mathematical functions, called Interpolation. These interpolations are crucial, as they determine how fast one pose or key position is left (or how long it is kept) while at one point it must get more and more similar to the following key-position. The progress or change among all the key-position will support an animation or can even destroy the meaning of it. The key image today is the keyframe - kind of, we don’t really have to do it that way, but it helps to understand the process.

The first thing to explore is therefore in animation how a soccer ball jumps. That seems unrelated to a camera move, but it is certainly mandatory to get good in camera animations. If that is mastered, while setting keyframes and handling the F-Curve, one can always use a dynamic set up to control his/her manual efforts.

Since I really don’t think that a serious artist’s request can be to just only know what specific button to press, I encourage the manual work of course. Example: one can press a button on a real camera and perhaps get a good picture while not even observing the scene, if the automatic is working well. Is he/she a good photographer? NOPE. A good photographer is able to know how to repeat something, and to use all the options given to get an image that can make the impact he/she wants. This can happen with automatic, but most of the time: not really.

Similar to this is animation. A clear understanding in pacing/timing, interpolation, reading as well as shaping F-Curves, is a main skill to move for example the camera. But the least thing one needs to know is, that the animation of the point of view (the position of the camera) and the point of interest (where the focus would be) can be quite different. There are many ways in Cinema 4D to do that, e.g., Align to Path/Spline, with camera, as well as for the target.

To create a walk-through, one might claim to leave all settings (e.g., field of view) untouched, as we have no zoom anyway in our eyes. But then the question is, if one is a documentarist or an artist. … perhaps something between? Or to use options to combine many single camera objects in a morph, which leaves the skill development low, but the results can be useable. What outcome is produced here?! But this goes again more into the theme of the post above. Yet, one can’t separate always the technical part from the resulting expression.

This is the shortest text I can give one about this subject, it has huge gaps from my point of view, like a scaffold, and it should be seen as such. In the “American Cinematographer Magazine”, as well as in pretty much any interview with great camera-wo-man I have read in the past four decades, the key expression is like one voice, even by very old and super skilled people of that craft, one doesn’t stop learning ever, every story forces one to develop something new. Look up “Dunning & Kruger Effect”, when you meet someone who knows it all, then move on studying your craft. So get started, there is no time to lose.

ENJOY