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I have an object at 0,0,0 and want to render an animation with "all" perspectives (or "all" possible rotation combinations of the object) of a camera to that object with a given radius. Its like having a sphere and each face of that sphere is a perspective.

I would like to be able to adjust the rotation steps manually.

I already made one with 300+ keyframes but that is kinda time consuming and not adjustable. ;)

So is there a easy way to do that in blender? I hope that my explaination was not to cryptic...

like this, but the camera perspective is generated automatically: like this, but the camera position and rotation is generated automatically

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  • $\begingroup$ since your object is a sphere, you would have indefinite amounts of perspectives. Can I ask you what the use case is of waht you want to do with this? You could probably write a script that instantiates cameras around the origin with an offset / radius and dynamically tell the script how many cameras(=perspectives) it should create. You should however use a icosphere for this because it will provide equal distribution (unlike the sphere which is more detailed at the poles) $\endgroup$
    – Madlaina Kalunder
    Commented Jun 27, 2017 at 9:11
  • $\begingroup$ It depend a little of what kind of covering you need, but if you are not confortable with script, there is maybe the possibility to work with constraints, using a track to or a copy location, and a follow path. After that the step could be adjustable by rescaling the path, maybe using a array modifier.... those are just some ideas up to you to decide if there is something to do whith that ;) $\endgroup$
    – Pyros
    Commented Jun 27, 2017 at 9:18
  • $\begingroup$ If you are confortable with scripting, a solution would be to generate an sphere whith parameter depending of what you need, place the camera at the center of each face or on each vertex while keeping a track to constraints on it, or managing the rotation yourself if you are confortable with that. It's not so difficult and could be parametrized in an addon, but you need some python knowledges. $\endgroup$
    – Pyros
    Commented Jun 27, 2017 at 9:25
  • $\begingroup$ Its for a computer vision test. The program should detect keypoints from all possible perspectives. With the render I am able to compare error rates. $\endgroup$
    – Ba Ku
    Commented Jun 27, 2017 at 12:44

2 Answers 2

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You can use the Curves Extra Objects Add-on to create a spiral and convert this into a Path. A Follow Path constraint and Track To constraint on your camera will then allow your camera to follow the spiral whilst tracking the object.

While it isn't strickly each 'face' (since it's a spiral rather than a set of concentric circles) it might suit your particular requirement or be able to be "adjusted" to suit - eg, by adding drivers to 'modulo' the coordinates to force them to be in discrete steps rather than continuous.

To achieve this, first go to File/User Preferences... and select Add-ons. Find the 'Add Curve: Extra Objects' and enable it.

You should now have a Spirals option in the Add/Curve menu in the 3d View.

Add a Spiral, set Spiral Type to '3' and set Turns and Steps to the desired values.

spiral

Select the spiral and select Object/Convert To/Curve from Mesh to convert it to a curve.

Move the camera to 0,0,0 and add Follow Path and Track To constraints as shown :

spiral constraints

This can produce the following result :

spiral camera track

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If you like to do this procedurally using nodes like Animation Nodes or Sverchok, here is one way to do it using AN.

Basically start with a master Active render camera that is pointing into your 3D mesh to render. Track To constraint it.

The nice thing about Blender is that if we duplicate Camera object, the constraint remains. So we can take this to advantage.

Simply use Object Instancer node in Animation Nodes and generate cameras at each point of Icosphere for example, to ensure you cover all the 360 degree.

Then you use a bit of Scriptnode trickery to simply switch active render camera per frame. That's all.

matrix of cameras

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