Using “Look At” clip on a moving camera results in jittery movement

[dgoyetteParticipant]

I was noticing that using the Look At clip on a camera produced very noticeable jittery if the camera is also moving. For my test, I set up an extremely simple cutscene, with just two tracks associated with the Camera: 1) A Look At clip, to keep the camera looking at an object at (0,0,0), and an Rotate Around clip also on the camera, rotating around the same object that we’re looking at. The result is very jittery:

Here’s a video of what this looks like in Play mode: https://youtu.be/LqDANcXhj0o

The jitter here is quite bad, and it gets worse the more the camera is rotating. So it’s the most noticeable when I’m zooming in close on an object in a fly-by, and keeping the object in view using Look At.

Is this a known issue?

Thanks.

[dgoyetteParticipant]

Looking into this further, I’ve determined that this jitter can be avoided if the Look At is placed before/above Rotate Around clip. It appears that the clips are evaluated in bottom-up order, and as long as Look At is evaluated after Rotate Around, there’s no jitter. So that’s good enough for me.

As an aside, I did later notice that Rotate Around has its own built-in Look At behavior associated with it, which would make sense to use. I use Rotate Around as an example, and in my own cutscenes I have more complex camera movement going on, which was also exhibiting this issue until I ensure that Look At was run after the camera movement.

Anyway, all set here. Thanks.

[GavalakisKeymaster]

Hello and sorry for the late reply. Happy new year 🙂

Indeed clips are evaluated bottom-up order (so do groups as well), so the clips at the top take effect last.

However, for camera movements specifically (if they are Slate camera shots), in general I would suggest using the camera parameters, meaning animating the camera parameters (positing, rotation, etc), or utilizing the camera shot Dynamic Shot Controler features to achieve automated moves like a look at for example, if that is a workflow you prefer of course 🙂

Cheers!

[Author]

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