Rotating/translating the motion path itself

Question

What I'm trying to do is to create a motion path for my camera by assigning keyframes, and then modifying this motion path by changing its global location, rotation and size.

I'll give a more concrete example.

I have a camera that performs 3 times of motion (translation, rotation, approach) towards an object. I want to perform these motions at different locations surrounding the object at the origin. Each time, the camera's start location would be a point on a large sphere surrounding the object, and all the motion paths would be rotated towards the object.

I hope this isn't too abstract. I already have functions to place the camera on a given vertex of a large sphere and orient it towards the center (by looking at surface normals of the sphere). However, I can't find a way to make my 3 types of motion (translation, rotation, approach) conform to the new location and orientation.

I think the easiest way would be to rotate/transform the motion paths themselves, instead of the object. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Perhaps you can accomplish this by giving the camera a parent (usually an Empty) and then just change the location/orientation of the parent over time (probably using constant interpolation for the keyframes of the parent's animation) and repeat the camera motion.

If you want to get super-fancy you can use NLAs to recycle the camera animation.