SOFTWARE: BLENDER
Practical tips and tutorials from pro artists to improve your CG skills
Virtual camera rigs are perfect for simplifying the process of moving your cameras around a 3D scene, as well as animating them in a way that feels natural and intuitive.
In the real-world, camera rigs are used to give the operator absolute control over the position and orientation of their camera. Directors will often want camera operators to achieve complex yet smooth camera movements, something that is a nightmare without a rig, but becomes a breeze with one.
Sometimes these rigs are small, lightweight and portable, perfect for run-and-gun shooting, while other rigs are bulkier, designed for studios and semipermanent setups. Physical camera rigs make camera movement easier in the real world, and the same is true for camera rigs in the virtual world.
In Blender, camera rigs are an addon to the default package, so they’ll need enabling at the outset. Blender developers prefer to, in some way, limit the default functionality of the core product in favour of providing the ability to install and enable secondary scripts that extend Blender’s capabilities.
The camera rigs don’t need either downloading or installing, they simply need enabling. Doing this will give you access to three camera rigs, including two 3D camera rigs and a 2D camera rig. In answer to the question here, we’ll set up a 3D Camera Crane rig.
This is made up of three main bones: the root bone, the control bone and the aim bone. As it’s a bone setup, you’ll need to make use of the pose mode. If you’re not familiar with it, don’t worry, we’ll go through it in the steps.
The root bone is the parent of the whole rig; transforming this will affect everything. Directly connected to the root is the control bone that controls the camera’s location. This is set up to always direct its orientation at the aim bone. Finally, the aim bone can be moved, which will affect the direction of the camera.
At first, the camera rigs may seem confusing and bulky, but once you get your head around them, they really are quite simple and straightforward. Once you’ve mastered the crane rig in these steps, why not try out the dolly rig and see how that compares?
