Maintain camera pointed at object while navigating past it?

Question

I'm recording camera movement while moving around using walk mode. While moving, I'd like the camera to remain pointed at a particular object (e.g. an empty).

E.g. in the scene below, I'd like to walk directly forward (and past the cylinder on the left) but have the camera always facing towards the empty in the middle of the cylinder as I move.

Is this possible? I tried adding a constraint to the camera (a Damped Track with the Target being the empty) but then when I try to enter walk mode, it says "Cannot navigate object with constraints."

Answer 1

I wanted to walk around like a cameraman in my scene, using walk mode, and using auto-keying to record my motion (in a similar way to how Polyfjord does things in his "Quick Smooth Camera Movements" tutorial). I.e.:

• Enable Auto Keying.
• Start Play Animation (with spacebar).
• Enter walk mode (with tilde ~).
• Move around (and so generate keyframes).
• Press left mouse button to finish walk mode.
• Press spacebar to stop Play Animation (and the generation of keyframes).

But I also wanted the camera to be continuously facing toward a particular object even as it moved around in the scene.

You can get the camera to track a particular object, using the Track To constraint (as pointed out by @John_Eason) but the moment you add a constraint like this to the camera, you lose the ability to move it around using walk mode (if you try to enter walk mode, Blender just tells you "Cannot navigate object with constraints.").

But the solution is simple enough - record your motion first, i.e. create all the keyframes as described above, and then add the constraint.

This means you don't see the behavior of the camera rotating to face the desired object as you're actually capturing the walk mode movement as keyframes - this behavior is only added afterward with the constraint - but that's the best I can do.