I just wanted to make sure ppl did not think i ment aroundthe camera's own axis.
I just was looking for a way to rotate the camera around the scene in an animation.
Turned out to be super simple with a null object. Kinda limited but i am not aiming to win an Oscar.. yet.
The camera will use keyframes like any other asset in the scene and Daz will interpolate the movement for you.
However, it likes to "spin" the camera around at the most inopportune time, on the wrong axis for some reason that I can't explain.
The good news is that it's possible to fix that behavior using null objects, or any object really, as long as you don't want to do anything too wild. You'll normally want two of these obejcts:
1. An object to parent the camera to. You will then move and rotate the object, NOT the camera itself.
2. An object to have #1 point at. This will be far easier to manage than trying to adjust the camera in every frame. It's best to have this as an independent object that isn't rendered rather than cheating and pointing at a character or other object used in the scent.
The entire process itself fairly straight forward.
1. Create the camera target object.
2. Create the camera control object, set the "point to" target to the object created in step 1.
3. Create the actual camera, parent it to the controller you created in step 2 and correct the camera angle if needed so this it is facing the correct direction to match the orientation of the controller object which should not be pointing at the target object.
4. Set the camera controller position as desired at various frames.
5. Adjust the camera target by frame as needed.
The biggest issues you will find yourself fighting is the undesired rotation of objects that you can get when using the "point at" function. The use of an independent target that only translates but never rotates should help considerably compared to doing something like targeting a bone on a character. Sometimes the only way to actually fix this is to go back after you've setup the main movements and remove the point at target and then correct the rotation at your keyframes. Sometimes even that won't work if you have extreme movement and you'll just have to do it the hard way. Generally, the less complicated your movement of the camera controller and camera target are the better your results will be.
I recommend playing around with it in very simple scenes until you get comfortable with how everything works since it will make it really easy to preview the animation results if each frame only takes a couple seconds to render.
Option 2 is much easier to do really basic stuff.
1. Create a null object to control the camera
2. Create the camera and position it as desired
3. "Parent in place" the camera to the null object
Now you can do things like spin the camera around the scene by just adjusting the angle on the null object.
Hope that helps
