Cinema 4D – CS Tools – Easy Cam

One of the outstanding Cinema 4D gurus, Chris Schmidt, created a library of routines that have made tasks that would require several steps and some programming, into relatively simple plugins that you can install, use right out of the box. Fellow Cinema guru Nick Campbell, alias GreyscaleGorilla, provides a simple download of these same tools with easy to follow tutorial introductions.

The first step in using the free CS tools library is downloading it and installing it. I suggest Nick Campbell’s site as the best spot (see link at the end of this article); he provides very simple steps with the download procedure.

I can only imagine the first dreamers who came up with the idea of 3D graphics in the first place. What it took to formulate their dreams, transform into building tools, and program it all into a software application boggles the mind. For me the endless things that you can do with 3D graphics, and the endless ideas that will be spawned when you do become an addict…. I mean user… share at least one thing and that is, imitating life.

Whether you are a cartoonist, a storyteller, or someone who wants to create five second introduction to a news show, capturing your audience with life like effects and images is one of the major tools in your toolbox. One of the major tools, in that tool box is your command of the your audience attention and that means command of the camera’s.

Providing you greater flexibility with your cameras is what the CS tool, ‘Easy Cam’ is all about. Cinema 4d comes with a staging object that will allow you to insert different camera objects into your movie and switch between the two but this switching is abrupt and nothing like the smooth transition we’re used to seeing in our Hollywood movies and like the smooth transition we want to present in our own.

I guess you could say that is what the Easy Cam is all about. When you add it to your stage and open the Easy Cam object, you see right away a starting, ending, and blending camera. Create an object for your camera. It can be anything; I chose an oil tank with some dazzling material.

Click on the Easy Cam null object, be sure the ‘Lock E to S’ selection under User Data is checked, (it is by default), and position your starting camera. Now uncheck the ‘Lock E to S’ button. This selection simply locks these two camera positions together. They start together, you position your starting position with them locked, then uncheck it to ‘free’ your second camera and create a second perspective. Now choose the EasyCam_Cam below, turn on its active camera tag, and play your movie. You will see a nice smooth transition from your first to your second camera.

This is all easy to do by simply adding two cameras to your scene. You have the ‘visible in editor/renderer’ switch to turn them off and on. You can switch active cameras with the stage object tool. None of these options produces the smooth transition that Easy Cam does however. Its easy to use, a good learning tool with its flexibility, and will give you that smooth camera move that adds keeps your audience focused on your scene unfolding, the real star of the show.