Multiplane camera confusion

[Kathy Engelhard]

Hi everyone,
I am confused by the MPC. I want to have the camera go into the frame, without zooming or moving just the background. I don't want to pan the background. I want to move only the camera into the background. As an example, going around a building, a person or following a stream. I have tried by dragging the HUD and the image always moves out of the frame space. I know that was in the manual but, I thought I'd experiment.
I hope that my question makes sense. Could you please post a step by step way?
Thank you in advance for your help.

[Animark]

Hi Kathy,

normally, I would place the different parts of the BG on different positions in the depth (z-values of the planes). Then I would animate the cameras z-value, that the camera moves towards the BG.

When parts of your BG "walking" out of the cameras view, it could be, that the camera or the BG-parts are animated on the x- or y-direction. In your case I would clear all the animation and start again only animating the z-values of the camera.

I hope, I understood right. Maybe a screenshot of your setup could be helpful to understand, what's going wrong.

[Kathy Engelhard]

Thank you Animark for your much needed help. I am so new to computer animation that my wording can be off. I applied the Z settings and it works perfectly as a zoom. And I am so happy to say that I had just learned how to shoot a zoom effect from watching a Youtube video but, your explanation
makes it so much easier to understand especially when I had doubts about what I was doing and how it works. There was no wording in the Youtube video.

I want to move the camera, lets say, from left to right, moving into the center of the background towards the back, without enlarging the surrounding images that the camera passes.
Like, using a regular camera and shooting an arial video from a helicopter over a city. Or, it's like the camera is panning, not the background.
Does that make sense? Is this possible?
Thanks again!

[Kathy Engelhard]

Yes, the Z plane makes a big difference and practicing a lot using the MPC is definitely making it easier.

I'm sorry, I just realized that I am posting to the wrong area. I'll be using, "contents sharing."
Sincerely,
Kathy