Simulate POV Walking Camera

Question

I have been struggling for a while to try to solve this problem.

I need to make a POV camera, it needs to simulate a walking person going up on a hill. I need the camera to move up&down as loop (simulate walking) but also to slowly move its Z values to a fixed value

I tried with Cycle modifier to the F-Curve of Z-location, to repeat the same movement (up and down, as walking, shown below). The problem is, it only allows me to do the "walking loop" on an horizontal Z-location line! I need the curve below to be like this, but rotating 45° from the horizontal!

Then I tried Bake Action to apply it to the curve, so I can soft-modify the curve. The problem is, Bake Action acts on all the F-Curves in the specified frame range (It acts on X-location, Y-location, Z-location, even if I need to apply it only to Z-location curve)

Do you guys know how I can solve the first or the second problem? Thanks a lot for your help!

Fed

Answer 1

An effect like this can indeed be obtained with the Cycles modifier:

(green curve: linear forward (Y+) motion; blue curve: oscillating up-and-down motion with a net downwards (Z-) displacement over time)

Just edit your basic step making sure that its first and last keyframe are offset (vertically) from each other, then set the Cycles modifier setting "After:" to "Repeat with offset".

A limitation of this method is that you can't easily change the steepness of the hill over time.

If you want more control

If you want more control over the velocity, the steepness, etc, you can use a different method. You will need two objects: your Camera and an Empty.

1. Assign the "walking" motion (just up and down, no net displacement) to the the camera (as you've already done)
2. keyframe the Empty so that it follows the profile of the hill at the desired pace
3. Place them on the same position at frame 0, then select the camera and the empty (order matters!) and parent the former to the latter using Ctrl+P > "Set Parent to: Object".