Camera Movement Compensation Rig

Rigging is not my strong suit. I’ve been coming up short trying to get this working. Before resorting to manual keyframing, I’m hoping there is a simple rig solution.

I have a camera rigidly fixed to a platform that is moving about in some choppy water. Imagine, if you will, the camera is being held by a person, who is trying to compensate for the rolling of the camera, so that it is aligned with the horizon. In such a scenario, the view would be constantly trying to right itself as it is leaning too and fro, but there would be a delay between when the “cameraman” notices he’s off target, and then correcting for it.

Any thoughts?

First thought - before I test it he said hurriedly - Put an empty in front of the camera, add a Track to Constraint to the camera with the target as the empty - set the influence to maybe 0.9 rather than 1. Move the camera and see how it looks. Delayed actions can be achieved by getting the keyframes of the camera movements as they are, then moving them several frames in X in the F-curve editor - select all the keyframes and key G X and a number.

I will think further on this whilst doing the some woodwork this afternoon.

Cheers, Clock.

You, sir, might be on to something! I dismissed the Track To constraint thinking it was just a “look at” constraint. I didn’t realize it would try to match the target’s rotation (or lack of).

So here is where I’m at: The rolling and pitching of the camera is generated by having it attached to a plane, who’s verts are shrink wrapped to the moving water. I can bake this into a keyframed F-curve.
Can I then bake the effect of the ‘tracked to’ empty into a separate F-curve, move these keyframes back in X for a delayed effect, and then blend the two F-curves?

Thanks for your help, by the way. :slight_smile: