Replicating Real Handheld Camera Tip

[Fluid Script Studios]

I thought i'd share this nugget of info, since it never really occurred to me to actually do this, i thought it was an elegant, simple solution to something somewhat complicated.

There are a number of ways to try and replicate handheld camera movement (Shaky cam) most of which include using the Jitter tool to some extent, and playing around with that until you get what looks like the real thing. But after some recent experimentation, i've found myself finding really good results using motion captured data.

They key here is to attach your camera's rotation using a lock to the bone of a model with motion captured animation, just like how you would attach a weapon or a hat to a model, but instead your attaching the camera to a part of the body.

Make sure your motion captured animation is idle-like, with very subtle, but noticeable micro movement. Be sure to not apply any smoothing to the motion capture before it gets to SFM, as it will dull the effect. Apply your smoothing in SFM. Also, try and use your play-head preset to dull the amount of movement.

Don't have any motion capture data? Try it on some HL2 Sequences...not perfect, but still pretty good.
I made some examples of the technique in action here. Note that the first clip had smoothing applied in ipisoft prior to SFM, and so i lost a layer of realism there, but you can tell that the motion is still very realistic. : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMCoAroVShU

Another helpful tip, if you are using a motion capture setup, then use a phone, and pretend like you are actually shooting a scene while doing your mocap recording, and use your hands as your lock points when you get to SFM.


I hope this tip helps some of you guys in some way. This technique is by far the fastest, and most accurate when it comes to the replication of this effect. Maybe I'll release a workshop item, which would be a motion captured animation of me doing shaky camera work, so that people can just load it and roll it!

[Capt Fuzzy]

Interesting, I'll have to play around with this and see what comes of it...

[Fluid Script Studios]

Originally posted by Capt Fuzzy:

Interesting, I'll have to play around with this and see what comes of it...

I've been playing around with this more and i'm getting very, very good results, to the point where it looks like exactly like real handheld. With this technique, even though it requires mocap, you can get some pretty complex shots, by just emulating how they would be done in a real life shoot.

If you do anything cool please share, it would be great. I think there's a lot more things that could be done with this, that expands into more than just cameras (lights maybe? hmmm) so i'm really interested to know if you or anyone else mucks around on it.

[Capt Fuzzy]

Well, I don't have the setup to do any mocap myself, but I think this could be applied to some models with realistic animations already included, so that was the direction I was going to lean while testing it.
As far as lights go, I think this very well could be applied to lights...
I managed to apply the same technique in this guide to a light and got that to work, so I don't see why this wouldn't work with lights as well.

[Fluid Script Studios]

Originally posted by Capt Fuzzy:

Well, I don't have the setup to do any mocap myself, but I think this could be applied to some models with realistic animations already included, so that was the direction I was going to lean while testing it.
As far as lights go, I think this very well could be applied to lights...
I managed to apply the same technique in this guide to a light and got that to work, so I don't see why this wouldn't work with lights as well.

Interesting, i remember seeing this guide a while ago.

I have a shot in one of my projects, which is basically a girl driving a car, and the idea was to have the hypothetical camera operator in the backseat, which would be handheld. My issue with achieving this type of shot is that the car is supposed to bounce a bit (like any real driving scenario) and so the camera has to sort of bounce up and down, while at the same time emulating handheld, which would make the camera operator a psuedo gimble (because a real operator would do his best to maintain the shot orientation, even with the car bouncing)

i'll muck around with a combination of the mocap handheld and your gimble technique to see if i can achieve this shot and make it look real. The cool thing with your technique here is that the axis helper can be anywhere on the screen, so i can lock the orientation, and even animate the axis helper to keep the target of the camera stationary while getting to keep the handheld motion. Well that's the idea anyway.

Also, I'll add you, i have some motion captured stuff from my older projects, maybe you could use some of them.

[fortress films]

seems like lot worse of a method than just keyframing it urself

[Capt Fuzzy]

Sure thing, I'd love to see what you come up with...

[=[ZMP]=]

Is this good for sex scene?
No offense.:)

[Zappy]

Originally posted by SFZ Gaming:

Is this good for sex scene? -

Regardless of the scene's contents, it always highly depends on the scene.

[Fluid Script Studios]

Originally posted by SFZ Gaming:

Is this good for sex scene?
No offense.:)

I'm pretty sure your talking about POV porn in particular?

Its perfectly possible. just think of it as being a camera man in real life. Motion capture what you would do and apply your hand bones movement to the camera in sfm, and bam you have handheld.

Of course that means you'd probably be humping the air in your mo-cap recording, so that will be funny to watch.

Originally posted by Fortress Films:

seems like lot worse of a method than just keyframing it urself

I mean, you can use any method you wish to make handheld, whether it's key-framing by hand (if you have the patience of a saint), Jitter/smooth, or Scott Puppeteer-ing, this method is the most realistic, and in my opinion the fastest way to do it (takes me less then five minutes to get what i'm looking for), It just requires something not everybody has access to (motion capture)... I do intend to make it accessible to everybody though eventually via workshop item.

but anyway, it's just supposed to open up a realm to different ways you can go about creating your animation...i mean like the guy above is talking about, shooting a POV shot for a sex scene...the POV involves the "thrust" of the camera operator, as well as being handheld. To do this in any of the older methods would be a challenge, but with the mocap method...seems like it would be super easy because your just doing it in real life and applying that motion into sfm.