Quick Tip: Creating Camera Shake

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Discover a quick and easy way to create camera shake in Blender.

Length:
9 minutes
Software:
2.59 r40207+
Difficulty:
Beginner
Rate:
VN:F [1.9.17_1161]
Rating: 4.7/5 (86 votes cast)

In this tutorial you will discover:

  • How to quickly add random movement to an object
  • The ins and outs of the noise modifier
  • How to add motion blur in the compositor

Motion blur is one of those things that you’ll want to create at some point or another. Camera shake lets the audience know that something big is happening. Whether it’s godzilla walking through the city or an atom bomb going off, camera shake comes in handy.

Most visual effects productions fake the camera shake by moving and blurring the video frame in post production, but since we’re working in 3D we might as well create some physical camera movement inside Blender.

Finished Result

I hope you enjoyed this quick tip tutorial :)

Download the starting .blend Quick Tip: Creating Camera Shake, 4.7 out of 5 based on 86 ratings

About Andrew Price

User of Blender for 9+ years. I've written tutorials for 3d World Magazine and spoken at three Blender conferences. My goal is to help artists get employed in the industry by making training accessible and easy to understand. I'm an Aussie and I live in South Korea ;)
READ MORE

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  • QA

    Well explained. Very helpful. Thank you!

  • http://www.youtube.com/user/WwZa7 WwZa7

    I Joined Camera shake and shatter glass.

    Here is My result:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR2xpu2fVm4

  • http://bldes.blogspot.com Melvin Guerrero

    Hi Andrew I really like your web. I translate this video in Spanish I hope you like this.

    http://bldes.blogspot.com/p/sacudida-de-camara.html

  • rekedtechie

    is there a list of modifier definitions and functions?.. just like those keyboard shortcuts..

    please dont think im a spoon feeder..

    -coz its real..hehe.=)

  • jack

    You didn’t pack the font into the .blend file, why for?

  • Aaron

    In recreating the scene (taking a second stab at Blender – trying to recreate some of your setups from scratch to ensure I can accomplish the end result), my point lamps do not show a ring around to indicate distance as they do in the start.blend. They show as rings around your point lamps in the letters, but mine only will show the dot. Anyone shed some light on this for me?

  • charl

    hey dude wich page do you say to download the feature frame range?

    nice tutos

  • Brett

    Just bought your book Andrew, love it, awesome! The best resource on using the compositor I’ve found bar-none. I’ve followed along several compositor tutorials in the past, but they fall terribly short of explaining why they’re using what nodes and how they knew what nodes to use to get that effect. Finally a proper resource to fill in the blanks! Love the bonuses! It’s like I bought the Wow Factor for the bonuses and got the book for next to nothing! Can’t wait to use these effects on your tutorials… now I’m cooking with fire!

    Cool camera-shake! I’ve been wondering how to do this one as well.

  • http://fhkkta.blogspot.com fhkkta

    一個好教學 謝謝

  • Leto85

    Under what term should I search to find the addon that gives the Restrict Frame Range button to Blender? I didn’t saw a term in this tutorial.

    Or, if the site doesn’t work that way, can someone give me a direct link to the page (instead of the homepage) of graphicall.org to directly download the Restrict Frame Range thing, or how it is called?

    • charl

      I would know it too any one? :(

  • Leto85

    Nice tutorial. Very handy in a lot of situation.
    But I got an error while downloading the starter file. That also was the exact name of the error: ‘Can’t download START_blend.’

    I’ve posted similar questions on the other topics here but apperantly nobody did know the answer so I hope somebody here does.

  • RCC

    Nice… Btw. i used noise modifier in Video Sequencer on Blend modes of the strip, but Blender like to crash when values are to high.
    You can add modifier even to your image resolution, material colors, and more…
    Andrew thnx for that Tip

  • Ahokas

    I´m also new in here. Start lear Blender now. Your tutorials are very good. Thanks those. You are doing very good job in other site of the world. I´m from Finland. Thanks

  • Duke of Time

    Now to go making my dinosaur stomp on everything and shake the viewer for good >:) Thanks a lot sir (and I don’t think your voice is annoying – to tell the truth I understand your voice and accent better than other spoken tutorials in English, and that’s a lot giving that I’m Spaniard).

  • Adão

    Very Good.

  • Toby

    Hi Andrew, another great tip again!

    May I just suggest a topic for a tutorial, that would come under lighting?

    I am really interested in cars, and have modelled a few and downloaded some others.

    However, the thing that ALWAYS gets me is the headlights / taillights! I can just never figure out how on earth to create the right effect, because a headlight is not like a streetlamp, underground light etc. , it lights up the interior of the headlight which reflects the light out (or however a headlight works, but anyway it is weird), and I have found this extremely hard to master… :)

  • Ovidiu

    I know I’m out-of-topic, apologies… but I’ve just read “somewhere” the following: “Main Sponsor: BlenderGuru” :D

    Nice!

    I think I’ll go an eat a mango now.

  • http://www.youtube.com/masterxeon1001 MasterXeon1001

    Great new feature! I was wondering if there was something like this for the Noise Modifier.

    Still the king Mr. Price. I saw your name as the main contributor of the Mango Project. Love the new site.

    Keep Blending!

  • Nick

    some of the .blends are messed up. The flamethrower .blend is a huge page of different character fonts and such…. don’t know whats wrong….

  • Gravitar

    Hello Andrew, thx for the fantastic tutorials that are – imho – the best in the entire web! Here my animation with camera shake. What do you think about? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tK-AkuRyIM

  • shine

    Thanks. It’s very interesting

  • http://anarchicmind.wordpress.com Titanium Pen

    With some tweaks, I may actually be able to recreate the camera shake in Battlefield 3 Beta! (When a rocket launches next to you in Operation Metro)

  • Winston

    Can you do a tutorial on handheld camera shake. I’ve tried it with connecting the camera to a partial softbody, but it’s unreliable and too difficult to control.

  • http://www.facebook.com/pages/blender-Works/132831550129151 tarik bagriyanik

    here is my camera shake:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGJWkpyxIOA

    - can we use “Sampled Motion Blur” option in render panel?
    - why cant we see blur on reflections?

  • Jerry

    You could have done a Earthquake or something..
    instead of text.. would have been more interesting..

    show a crack that grows.. during the shaking..

  • cjxgm

    Yet another way to achieve this is by using NLA editor.

    You convert keyframes into an action in NLA, then press tab to get into tweakmode, then using GraphEditor to add noise modifier. And then get back into NLA window, you press tab again to exit tweakmode, then open up property window, uncheck “Auto Blend In/Out”, then you can make this action fade in/out.

    PS: I know I used too many “then”s :-;

  • comeinandburn

    another way to achieve this is by making the camera a “child” to an empty with the noise modifier on it via the “Child of constraint”. This way you can animate the influence over time.

    If you happen to have a lot of shakes going on you only need animate the influence along the Fcurve instead of adding more modifiers…. either way:)

    thanks Andrew great tip!! I didn’t know about this addition to the noise modifier.

    • steve

      +1 on this approach, its definitely useful when you want fine control over influence! although i noticed there was an influence option under the frame range options, so maybe you can animate the influence directly inside the modifier as well?

  • scooter

    Elias, graphicall.org has Mac ready versions.

    I tried out this one just now and it has the ‘restrict frame range’ feature Andrew used.

    Here’s the graphicall.org link:
    http://www.graphicall.org/400

    • Leto85

      scooter, Would you send me a link to the Windows version of where to download it? I’m not familar with that site.

      Andrew, if you’re reading this, can you remove my previous post from October 17, 2011 at 10:52 am? After sending this one, that previous one isn’t necessary anymore. I tried to do it myself, but the only option I had is replying to it.

      Thanks in advance!

  • Elias

    Thanks!
    But sorry, i’m stupid… Is this available for MacOs?

  • Elias

    I mean for downloading it…

  • Elias

    Hi,
    where exactly can I find that plug-in for the restrict frame range thing?

  • GenteBlender

    Hola Andrew, solo para decirte que los tutoriales estan cool, hemos aprendido mucho con ellos, aqui entre amigos comentamos de tu página, pero hay varios que no lo agarran muy bien por el idioma, pero bueno ahi nos ayudamos, te escribi en español por que se que vas a buscar la forma de traducirlo, bueno ahora imaginate lo que hacen algunos de aca que no cogen bien el idioma, y mas aun cuando tus tutoriales duran mas de 30 min jajajaj, bueno te cuidas, un abrazo desde Perú de la gente que es seguidora de tu pagina.

    Thank you very much.

  • Bash

    Thank you VERY much for all you do =)

  • balkaran

    Does anybody know when is the nature’s academy opening i want to get it

  • anyomouse

    hmm… you should do one on making the camera shake like someone is holding it.

  • Kjell Inge Sandvik

    Another great tutorial from the master! Very nice!

  • ———–

    I hate repeated tutorials

    • Gabriel Bramböck

      hey, this is not a repeated tutorial, it shows a better and actualized method. So if you r just trolling around, go to another site!

  • http://www.facebook.com/deadlandchronicles Tadd

    Nice work there. Easy tip, easy effect. I like it.

    Maybe make the words bounce a touch will add that realism.

  • http://chezsteven.over-blog.net steven

    thank for this tutorial. the curve modifier is very Interesting.

  • levi cauble

    Sweeeet….

  • joao

    hello mr price, how are you? i m joao victor and i an 3d artist, i new, please look at my channel on youtube, look a my job, and say what you think, please.http://www.youtube.com/user/jvictorcooco

    • http://www.idontknow.com Hazzman

      Pretty cool, apart from the fact that I cant understand Portuguese… At least I think its Portuguese. Oh, and Andrew, I’m sorry if I daunted you with my Mech request. That was a bit over the top. Anyways, love this sight.

      Thanks again!

  • http://www.idontknow.com Hazzman

    hah, anyways, I really wanted to know this, could you do a tutorial on modelling a mech, and maybe even rigging it. I know it’s a little ambitious but It would be amazing! Anyways, you don’t have to if you don’t want to…

  • leo

    Oh yeah man ! Cool tutorial ! I wanna know how to shake the camera in random orientations.

    • http://www.blenderguru.com Andrew Price

      To make the camera shake in more directions just copy the modifier stacker (by clicking the clipboard icon) to the Y and Z rotation. Have fun :)

      • Allan Cobos

        Hi Andrew: Sorry but my english is not that good enough so i did’n understand the webpage where i can download the plug in or what ever it is to restrict the frames, so please could you tell it to me again, thak you so much

        • anon

          Hi there. It’s not a plug-in. It is a new feature integrated inside blender. Go to graphicall.org and download a BETA / development build of blender.

  • http://www.idontknow.com Hazzman

    First,
    I’m new but I love your tutorials, thanx again.