At some point or another, simple through the course of getting stuff done in CGI, you will need to have a 2D plane automatically orient itself to a camera, so the plane will always face the camera.

There are a few ways of doing this, and depending on the application, the process may differ. Here, Roman Armankutsev, SFX & VFX Artist and CGI Modeler from CarteblancheFX demonstrates the process of orienting a plane to a camera in a few different applications, such as NUKE, Cinema 4D, and even in After Effects.

First you need to calculate the trajectory of the camera. To do this, use the program for tracking. We will not go into details of what the camera tracking and how it works, it is subject to the following articles

Some applications this is as simple as selecting an “auto orient” setting, while others the task is a little more laborious. Roman has created a post on the Trick with Orientation of a Plane to the Camera, which briefly describes the process to calculating the trajectory of a camera by tracking, and assigning the resulting point cloud data to a 3D plane.

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