ANR Camera Shake

Overview

Camera Shake moves the image like a camera that is held, carried or rattled. Pick a Preset, from Handheld (Subtle) to Earthquake, Explosion Rumble or Vibration, and it works straight away: the frame drifts, rolls and pushes in and out with layered, natural jitter, with motion blur on and the edges hidden.

Motion blur follows the movement, and each part of the frame takes only as many samples as it actually travels while the shutter is open. A gentle handheld shake with blur therefore renders quickly, and a big one still blurs cleanly. Type frame numbers into Impact Frames for jolts at a hit, an explosion or a landing, which settle over Decay frames.

Hide Edges zooms in once for the whole shot, by the least amount that keeps every frame's edges out of view, so the zoom does not change from frame to frame. Use it where you would reach for Nuke's CameraShake or an animated Transform with motion blur.

Inputs

1. Sourcerequired

   The plate or comp to shake.

Output. The Source, shaken, in the same format, with motion blur along the movement and, with Hide Edges on, zoomed in just enough that no edge shows.

Quick start

1. Add ANR Camera Shake to the plate or the finished comp and connect it to Source.
2. Choose a Preset from the menu once the Source is connected: its amplitudes are then scaled to the Source's width.
3. Set the overall strength with Intensity, and key it to ramp the shake in and out.
4. Fine-tune with Amplitude X, Amplitude Y, Rotation, Zoom and Speed. New Seed gives a different shake with the same character.
5. For hits, type the frames into Impact Frames (for example 24 60 95) and set Strength and Decay.
6. Set Shutter to match the plate's motion blur (0.5 is a 180-degree shutter). Use Quality: Draft while scrubbing and Normal for the render.

The panel

The node's panel as Nuke shows it, with the values of a new node. Click any control to see what it does; tabs and sections work as in Nuke.

All controls

Tips

• Put ANR Lens Effects and ANR Film Grain after the shake, so the vignette, distortion and grain stay fixed to the frame like a real lens and sensor.
• One big impact or a high Intensity key raises the Hide Edges zoom for the whole shot. If the zoom gets too strong, lower them, or turn Hide Edges off and set Outside to Mirror or Extend.
• If the blur on a very fast shake looks stepped, raise Max Samples: it caps the samples any pixel can take.
• Speed is in shakes per second and follows the Source's frame rate.
• Time Offset slides the shake's movement in time to find a better moment; Impact Frames stay where they are.

Good to know

• Hide Edges works out one zoom over the Source's whole frame range, so changing the shake or the Intensity keys can change the zoom on every frame. Zooming in softens the image slightly.
• The motion blur comes only from the shake's own movement; the node reads just the current frame of the Source.
• The same values and Seed always give the same shake.
• Runs on the CPU: no GPU and no AI model needed.

Works with

ANR Film GrainAdds film-like grain that follows the image's brightness, to match CG, paint fixes and clean comps to grainy footage.ANR Lens EffectsGives clean CG or a finished comp the character of a real lens: distortion, colour fringing, soft edges and a vignette, around one centre.