FollowCam by AnimStarter

Anyone who has tried to animate a fast moving character knows the feeling. You set up a beautiful framing in your viewport, your character takes one big step forward, and suddenly you are tumbling through the camera trying to keep up with them. Half your animating time disappears into camera wrangling. AS_FollowCam by AnimStarter is the script that finally puts an end to that. The idea is really simple. You select your controller, hit create, and the tool builds you a custom camera constrained to that control. Your focal length, aperture, depth of field, and clipping planes all get copied from your current viewport camera, so you do not lose the framing you spent ages dialling in. You just get a new camera that follows your character and feels exactly the same. What I think is really cool is the level of control you get over how the camera behaves. You can lock it fully so it follows both translate and rotate, follow position only, or just track rotation. So whether you are working on a run cycle and you want the camera to glide alongside the body, or you are doing a vehicle shot where you only want it to face the right direction, you have got the right setup ready in seconds. There is also a clean little toggle UI built in. One click flips your viewport between your original camera, so you can see the wider shot, and your new follow cam, so you can polish the details. And if you want, you can have it auto switch into the new camera the moment it is created. This is the kind of tool that comes from someone who actually animates for a living. AnimStarter built it because they were tired of fighting the viewport on body mechanics, creature work, and complex action shots. And once you start using it, you will wonder how you put up with anything else. Installation is easy. Drop INSTALL_AS_FollowCam.mel into Maya, restart, and you will find it sitting inside the AnimStarter shelf ready to go. Plugin by AnimStarter.