I've looked all over, and I can't find a way to make the center of the camera rotation the center of the camera itself in P6? I want to be able to rotate the camera, but the controls only orbit it around an external centerpoint - is there some way to move the centerpoint to the camera itself? This seems like a no-brainer, as requirements go - really, I would prefer having both Orbit and Rotate controls, and can't imagine a reason why they don't exist.

And almost completely OT, but is there any plug-in out there, for Poser or Lightwave or any of the "regular" 3D programs, that allows the camera to be controlled by a game controller or keypad, so the user can essentially control the camera like a flight simulator, and it records the path taken as the animation path? Another no-brainer, IMHO ...

Try using the "Dolly" camera.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

you can try parenting the camera to a ball placed directly below it and move the ball.

yep just tried it.  you can place the ball below the camera or move the camera to the ball ( which is what i did) then change parent of the camera to the ball.  then use camera view, select ball, and rotate or move ball.  works just fine.  should be good for those far off world center views.

Good idea, elenorcoli! And thanks, Dr. Geep; that definitely works, too. In fact, it might be a good idea to try the latter trick on the Dolly camera, using the parenting to act as the "crane" and retaining the rotation function of the camera itself.

Thinking about it, I could probably also use "Point at" for something like this, using the dolly controls to move the camera and letting it automatically follow its subject.

I'm still a relative virgin at animation, but I've chosen to tackle a major animation project, so I'm kind of in "crash mode." ;)

On the 'flight simulator', try my Hansel and Gretel script.  Not quite

what you're imagining, but it does let you draw a path in real time

and then animate some object (a camera or a figure or whatever)

to follow this path in 'frame time'.

http://ockhamsbungalow.com/Python/HanselGretel.zip

Cool! Thanks, ockham! I'll give that a try .