Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Lock a Camera to an Animated Character

When animating a character, you frequently run into a case where you're trying to animate a secondary detail on the character as he's moving. For these situations, I like to create a new camera and parent it to the character. This way, the camera goes anywhere the character does. I find this approach helpful for facial animation on a moving character. To lock a camera to your animated character, use the following steps:

1. Add a new camera (Shift+ACamera) and put it in front of your character's face.
2. With the camera still selected, add the head bone of your character to the selection (Shift+right-click).
3. Press Ctrl+PBone to parent the camera to the bone.

   Now, wherever the head goes and whichever direction it turns, the camera is always looking at your character's face.

4. Whenever you want to work on the facial animation for your character, select this camera (right-click) and switch to its view by pressing Ctrl+Numpad 0.