Chop Driven Camera Shake

Sometimes when rendering an animation, I like to add some form of shake or other imperfections to camera movement in order to break its synthetic computer-like animation. In Maya, I used to recycle shake samples captured from real camera, or more often than not emulate this movement with animated fractal noise.

Because I like to stick to well-tried ideas, after switching to Houdini I looked for a similar way of recreating random camera movement. The choice naturally fell on channel operators (CHOPs) which allowed me to easily generate noise for translation and rotation, but I needed something more than that. I wanted a camera rig which would allow me to position and animate a camera using its “viewfinder”, and only once I feel satisfied with the movement, attach an easily modifiable shake.

Ultimately I decided to use two cameras in a parent-child relationship. One (the parent) for positioning and animation, the other (grandchild) acting as render output camera. Between them I squeezed camera shaker HDA. The shaker asset exposes most parameters supplied by noise CHOPs and should allow for easy adjustment of camera shake to whatever effect one requires. From subtle hand-held camera, to keyframed explosion shake. Although for the latter, I would probably use it in conjunction with wire solver to introduce additional level of realism.