Camera Point Tutorial

Overview

In one of my recent projects, I created a room with a ping pong table situated in the center, where two floating ping pong paddles are competing in a short back-and-forth volley. I wanted both paddles to be constantly moving a little, just to show that both paddles were reacting to the ball going from one side to the other, then back. I decided to attach the paddles to cameras that point towards the ball constantly, so the paddles would always face the ball.

1. Designate one object to be what is focused on (the ball) and another object to be what will focus on the first object (the paddle).










2. Create a "Camera and Aim"







3. Position the camera on the 2nd object, oriented the same way. Then, put the camera's aim on the first object.









4. Open Outliner, find the 2 objects, the camera, and the camera's aim. Using the command key on Mac or control key on PC, drag the 2nd object onto the camera, then drag the camera's aim onto the 1st object.







5. Now, whenever you move the first object, the second object, which is attached to the camera now, will always face the first object.

The Plausible Impossible

1. Gus Goose runs over to a chair and sits down very quickly and abruptly. He begins to shake back and forth, like his body has to take time to absorb the sudden change in motion. Logically, this does not occur, but due to Newton's 3rd law of motion, stating that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

2. Gus Goose begins to eat corn on the cob, which starts to sound like a typewriter machine. In real life, corn on the cob makes a completely different sound, but by the way he eats it, moving from left to right, then reseting and starting the process over again, it almost seems as though his mouth and the corn could sound like a typewriter.

3. While Gus eats the corn, the perspective shifts over to Donald Duck, whose head begins shaking in the same typewriter-simulating way as Gus eats the corn, almost in reaction to the consumption of the corn. This emulates Newton's 3rd law once again.

4. Gus still craves food, so he grabs a stack of bread and meat, and begins shuffling them like one would a deck of cards. The two stacks of food instantly take on the same structure and integrity as flimsy paper playing cards, respectively sounding like someone is shuffling a deck.

5. After he eats his shuffled deck of sandwiches, they stay in his throat temporarily, changing the shape of his neck to make it look like an accordion. His head then bobs up and down, mimicking what an accordion looks and sounds like when being played, which adds some sense of logic to this illogical instance.