MAXON Computer Cinema 4D Tutorials: Camera Animation through a City

Project Based Tutorials - City Scene

City Scene:
Camera Animation through a City
Download:
PDF / Project Works with:
GO, SE, XL Requires:
Version 5.0+

This tutorial builds on: City, Close-up Building, Detailed Buildings

City Layout & Landscaping for Camera Fly-by

This tutorial will show you how to combine your city blocks with your detailed buildings and set your city up for a camera animation. It will also go through a few ways to landscape the grounds where the camera will zoom in close.

Step 1: The first step is to bring all the detailed buildings you've created into the city blocks scene. Go to File=>Import and select the files you want to bring into the scene.

Step 2: Your buildings may be too large or too small compared to the surrounding buildings making up the city blocks. Scale the different buildings so that they are similar in size to the surrounding buildings.

Step 3: It is now time to lay the city out in preparation for the camera animation. You'll have to create copies of City Blocks and move them around so they can cover a large area while still leaving a space for the detailed buildings. This is the layout used for this city.

Overhead View

Side View

Step 4: As you can see from the layout above, the city is not perfectly shaped or laid out. Irregularity will help to make the city look a little more realistic. Scale some of the buildings taller or shorter so that they are not all the same exact height. You can even delete some buildings from some of the blocks.

Step 5: Once you've got your city laid out, you can organize your detailed buildings so that they'll be ready for a camera to fly through them. See how these different buildings were laid out in the city. The buildings don't have to be laid out exactly like this, although this layout provides a clean path for the camera to travel over one of the old buildings and through the landscaped area up to the Detailed Building.

Overhead View

Step 6: There is only a small patch of area that you will need to landscape. In this scene the landscaping consists of a grassy plane, a rocky disc, 3 trees, 6 lampposts, and a fountain. Start off with a plane placed just above the floor (If floor is at Y=0, then position the plane at about Y=0.1) covering the small area that the camera will fly through. Texture the plane with a green bumpy material to simulate grass.

Step 7: Bring in a disk and place it in the middle of the plane and just slightly above it. Texture the disk with a rocky material

Step 8: Create a Lamp post (See Lamp Tutorial) and drag out five copies (You may have to scale your lamp post to fit your scene after bringing it in). Place the six lampposts around the rocky disk.

Step 9: The trees in this scene are very simple since they will only be seen by the camera for a split second. A cylinder is used for the tree pot, another cylinder for the trunk, and a cone used for the leaves & branches. The texturing is just a plain green for the leaves and a brownish color for the pot and trunk. These can be placed randomly around the grass area.

Step 10: Make a fountain (See the Fountain tutorial) and position it in the center of the rocky disk area. Your landscaping should now be sufficient and you're now ready to begin your camera animation.

Step 11: To bring an animatable camera into the scene go to Objects=>Scene Object=>Camera. You'll first want to position the camera at the starting point: a wide shot of the city. Select the camera then click the 'Attach Virtual Camera to Object' icon in the Action palette. This changes your editor view to the view seen by the camera object. You can now move the camera around and see exactly what it is seeing.

Attach Virtual Camera to Object

Step 12: Position the camera for the opening shot. It should be high and outside the city. The key to getting your scene to look like a city is by giving the impression that your city blocks continue to sprawl outward as far as the eye can see. This would require an enormous amount of objects and geometry, which you already have enough of as it is. Add an environment object and Activate fog to obscure the view beyond your city. Try to recreate a foggy day over Manhattan. This is a simple way to hide the fact that your city is limited only to what you can see directly in front of the camera.

Step 13: You'll now want to begin keyframing the position of your camera. Open the timeline (Windows=>Timeline). Make sure that your time manager is also open. In the Time Manager check the boxes for Pos. and Direction and uncheck Size and Sub-Obj. With your camera selected and positioned over the city, hit the record button in the Time Manager to create a keyframe for Position and Direction in the Timeline. You'll see a sequence of frames appear in the timeline for Position and Direction with a keyframe at Frame 0.

Step 14: You should have a basic idea of how your camera is going to fly through the city and how long it is going to take. 30 frames go by every second if your frame rate is 30fps. If you want a ten second animation, then your time line sequences should be 300 frames long. Once you know where you want your camera to go, move the time slider in the Time Line window ahead to where you want the next keyframe to be, then move the camera into its new position and/or direction and hit Record. A new keyframe will be recorded wherever you set the time slider to.

Step 15: Keep adding keyframes and moving the camera along until you reach your final destination. Use the Attach to Camera tool to look through your camera and see exactly where the camera is pointing at each keyframe. This example scene has about four keyframes over a 390-frame animation. You can move your keyframes to different places on the sequence track to get the timing down. The further the camera travels, the more frames should be between the keyframes. Getting the camera to fly smoothly and evenly requires a lot of tweaking. The first keyframe (0F) is a long distance starting shot. The next position should zoom in closer to the section of the city with the detailed buildings (210F). The next keyframe brings the camera down to the street level of the city into the small area you landscaped (270F). And finally, move the camera through the landscaping to its final shot, the beautiful MAXON Logo! (Or whatever you choose to end up on) (330). The rest of the animation is just the camera slowly rotating over the MAXON sign.

Frame 120

Frame 210

Frame 270

Frame 330

Frame 390