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I would like the camera to follow an object. At frame 300 the camera should freeze at its current position and stop following.

I tried using Copy Location constraint (with offset) on the camera. At frame 299 is a keyframe with Influence 1 and at frame 300 is a keyframe with Influence 0. As a result, the camera jumps to its original position instead of staying in place. The same problem is with Child of constraint.

I also tried to use Transform driver for the camera with the object target. It makes a hard copy of the location (visible in Properties panel) during the animation. But I have no idea how to tell the driver to stop changing camera's location at frame 300 and leave these values as they are.

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  • $\begingroup$ Can't you hand over the location constraint to another object? Put an empty at the desired stop location, put another location constraint on the camera, target: the empty. Key the influences - at frames 0 &299, cube influence 1, empty influence 0 .. frame 300, cube influence 0, empty influence 1. $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts ♦
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 8:25
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    $\begingroup$ another way could be add a copy location and then another constraint like limit distance, and animate the camera distance at desired frame... but idk if this is better then below two empties way... camera has its own animation, as I see it... $\endgroup$
    – m.ardito
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 8:32
  • $\begingroup$ I got it, wait for another answer... $\endgroup$
    – m.ardito
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 8:52
  • $\begingroup$ @camcam - I do it this way... blender.stackexchange.com/questions/100022/… $\endgroup$
    – Edgel3D
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 21:03

2 Answers 2

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Here is another way that could behave like you expect:

  1. add the copy location constraint.

at frame 1

  1. keyframe: copy location status "on", and influence "1"
  2. keyframe also the camera "visual location" (I key)

at frame 300

  1. keyframe again the camera "visual location" (I key)
  2. then, keyframe copy location status "off", and influence "0"

I know it sounds a bit crazy, but doing exactly so, it should work:

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ I used your solution in my project and the camera behaves very well. The only thing is to remember to re-keyframe the camera's visual location when the object animation changes, not a problem. Thank you. $\endgroup$
    – camcam
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 13:15
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    $\begingroup$ Another thing to remember is not to use offset with the Copy Location constraint when keying visual LocRot. If offset is necessary, wrap the Camera inside an Empty, apply the constraint on Empty and then offset the Camera. $\endgroup$
    – camcam
    Commented May 18, 2018 at 9:59
  • $\begingroup$ @camcam im using blender 2.93, i don't see the status "off" thing for the copy location constraint? $\endgroup$
    – Harry McKenzie ♦
    Commented Mar 2, 2022 at 4:44
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Yes, you can't animate that, stop using the constraint and keep its transforms. You can do it by hand, using the apply menu, but that is not animatable, imho.

You could do this differently: create two empties, and animate them in a way that they have the same movement until a point, where one stops and the other goes on until the end.

Then parent the target object to the last empty, and the camera to the first.

This is how it works:

enter image description here

If needed you could add a tracking constraint on the camera to keep focus on the target object, even after it stops.

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  • $\begingroup$ But the object's animation will change during the design of the scene, so to preview the animation via camera, it will be necessary to copy keyframes from object's empty to camera's empty each time they change, that's how I understand this concept. $\endgroup$
    – camcam
    Commented May 17, 2018 at 8:09

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