Camera shake and motion

Camera motion adds life to a shot without keying every frame: a rattle when a punch lands, a gentle handheld drift, a quick zoom punch, or a camera that follows a runner by itself. In this guide you shake the camera on a hit, then learn every move.

Shake the camera when the punch lands

Blue’s punch hits Red on frame 16. A short, hard camera hit on that frame makes the punch feel heavy.

1. Select the camera and open its moves. Click Camera in the timeline (or press Ctrl+K), then click Motion under Preview in the Camera inspector. In the playground below this is already done.
2. Pick a move. Click Impact punch: one hard hit that settles. A clip appears in a new lane under Camera, starting at the playhead, and the inspector shows its settings.
3. Put it on the hit. Under Timing, type Start 16 and press Enter. Or drag the clip in its lane until the tooltip says it starts at frame 16.
4. Set the strength. Drag Amount down to make the hit softer, or raise Intensity (how far it moves) and Zoom (how much it punches in). The graph under the settings redraws as you drag.
5. Watch it. Click ▶ Preview this move to play just the clip’s frames, then click it again to stop. Press Space to play the whole animation.
6. Bake it (optional). Click Bake to keys. The shake becomes a key on every frame of the Camera row and the clip turns faded (muted), so you can fine-tune single frames by hand.

Try itCamera motion playground: shake on the hit

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1. Click a move in the gallery: try Impact punch.
2. Put it on the hit: set Start to 16, or drag the clip in the lane under Camera.
3. Change Amount with its slider or by typing.
4. Click ▶ Preview this move and watch Preview.
5. Click Bake to keys and look at the Camera row.

Blue’s punch lands on frame 16. Point at the playground first, so the keys go to it and not to the page.

The six moves

The Motion tab opens on a gallery that describes each move. Once a move exists, Add above the list opens the gallery again.

Intensity moves the shot up to that many pixels, Rotation tilts it up to that many degrees, Speed is how many times a second it moves, Zoom is how far it punches in, and Settle is how fast an Impact punch calms down (higher settles sooner). Amount scales the whole move: 0% switches it off, 100% is the preset, up to 200% when you type it.

Time and tune a move

1. Select the move in the list under Camera moves, or click its clip in the lane under Camera. Its eye button mutes it without deleting it.
2. Set its timing. Start is the first frame, Length how many frames it lasts, Ease in and Ease out how many frames it takes to fade in and out. In the lane, drag the clip’s middle to move it and an edge to make it longer or shorter.
3. Shape it with the sliders. The sliders cover the useful range; type a value to go further. Drag a field’s name sideways to change it (Shift fine, Alt extra fine), and press Esc while typing to put the old value back.
4. Fine tune opens the exact values: Move X and Move Y separately, plus Roughness and Seed for Shake and Handheld, Phase for Wobble, and Direction and Speed for Impact punch. New variation picks another random pattern with the same settings.
5. Check it with ▶ Preview this move, which plays only the clip’s frames until you stop it.

Moves that overlap stack in extra lanes. The arrow beside Camera folds the lanes away (a thin coloured line on the Camera row still shows where moves play). Move timings are in scene frames: changing a figure’s keys never moves a camera move, so move the clip yourself if the action moves. A locked Camera row locks its moves too.

Follow a figure

Follow keeps one or more figures in the shot, like a camera operator tracking a runner.

1. Select the figure on the stage. Right-click it and choose Follow with camera, or select the camera and click Follow in the Motion gallery. The Follow clip starts at the playhead and runs to the end of the animation.
2. Under Following, Follow selected figures adds more figures. With two or more, each gets a weight slider: how much it pulls the shot.
3. Pick a Direction: Both, Across (left and right only) or Up/down. Amount blends between your own camera keys (0%) and the full follow (100%).
4. Make it feel like a person filming: Smoothness is how many frames the camera takes to catch up (0 locks on), Dead zone how far the figure can move before the camera reacts, Look ahead leads the shot toward where the figure is going.
5. Under Framing, Auto zoom zooms in or out to keep every followed figure in view, with a Margin and a Zoom limit. Offset X/Offset Y keep the figure off-centre, and Keep current framing sets them from where the figure is in the shot now.

For a runner: choose Across so the horizon stays still, a little Smoothness, then place the runner left of centre and click Keep current framing so there is room in front of them. Two Follow clips that overlap share the shot: fade one out while the other fades in to pass the camera from one figure to another. A Follow clip follows 1 to 16 figures and lasts up to 100,000 frames.

Read the graph

Under the settings, the graph draws the selected move frame by frame. Move shows X (solid) and Y (dashed) in pixels, Roll the tilt in degrees, Zoom the zoom in percent. The shaded ends are Ease in and Ease out. Hover over it to read a frame; while you play or scrub, its cursor follows the playhead. Changing a value switches to the matching view. Fit curve rescales it after a big change.

Bake moves into camera keys

1. Finish the camera keys and the moves first. Select a move.
2. Beside Bake to keys, choose All frames or This move's frames. The range includes every enabled move that plays in it, not only the selected one.
3. Click Bake to keys. The Camera row gets a held key on every frame of the range, and the baked part of each move is muted, so nothing plays twice.

Baking is one undo step. It keeps every whole frame looking the same. A Follow stays camera travel for parallax after baking. Baking can make up to 100,000 samples at once; shorten the range if a long animation goes over it.

Problems and questions

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