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How Do I Make The Camera Focus On A Rotating Cube On A Path In A Loop Animation ?

With Camera Constraints, The Camera Fails To Focus On the cube & Gets Lost As It Moves Along The Path. With Camera Parented to the cube, I Can make the camera focus on the cube but I can't rotate the cube (When I rotate the cube, the background rotates but not the cube!

The Basic Idea is to have an animation where the cube rotates & moves along a path while the environment in the background changes through out the Loop Animation.

I hope the question is not too large! Thank you!

Blend File : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KNZ9XNxvlqjS3VRpWC1GGCEz0kr6M6FI/view?usp=sharing

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    $\begingroup$ Show an image of your "camera constraint" setup: at least one of the "track" constraints, applied to the camera, and targeting the cube, should do the job. Also, why you write all words with first letter uppercased? $\endgroup$
    – m.ardito
    Feb 24, 2018 at 8:17
  • $\begingroup$ Thank you.I will try that. For upper case, well a habit from tagging music files and when posting on blogs ;) $\endgroup$
    – RKA
    Feb 25, 2018 at 7:52
  • $\begingroup$ So far, camera constraints haven't worked out for me.. Also, I understand from Marc's answer that one has to use controllers & locators to complete this animation. $\endgroup$
    – RKA
    Feb 25, 2018 at 8:36

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Never animate any object without a controler.

In your case I would give a hierarchy that goes this way : A locator called MainCtrl => A locator called RotCtrl=> The Cube. MainCtrl would be the one constrained to the path and RotCtrl the one that would rotate the cube. The Cam could be the child of the MainCtrl. Then the camera could also have a Target (made with another locator) so that you could control how it looks to your cube during animation...

Whatever, NEVER animate directly your mesh, always use a control (rig) so you'll be able to change any geometry afterward without loosing animation

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  • $\begingroup$ Thank you for your detailed reply! I haven't used controllers & locators yet! I shall follow a few tutorials to try & get a handle on them. $\endgroup$
    – RKA
    Feb 25, 2018 at 8:03
  • $\begingroup$ I haven't found any good tutorials on locators / controllers. Are These Used In Belnder's Game engine ? It would have been helpful to have more information on how to use these. Till then, my animation may have to wait! $\endgroup$
    – RKA
    Feb 25, 2018 at 10:38
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** Here's the solution in 4 easy steps :

Step 1 : Create 2 "empty" objects namely "path follower" & "rotation controller".

Step 2 : Set "follow path constraint" On the "path follower". The "forward axis" of the constraint is set to y and "up axis" is set to z.

Step 3 : Set Parentage :

. The cube is parented to the "path follower". . The camera is parented to the "rotation controller" (this empty object rotates the cube indirectly).

Step 4 : Set Key Frames (location & rotation) on the rotation controller (key i; then "locrot") . This sets the animation!

And voila! The animation starts to roll!! Thanks to Marc (@Marc Urlus) for the useful hints to complete this animation. Thanks to @m.ardito (@m.ardito) for trying to help.

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