programming viewport and interactive camera control

[Anonymous]

Hi - I'm hoping I can find some help on where to start with this

the aim is to override the default mechanism for controlling the 3d viewport and hence the camera that viewport represents (I don't see any real difference here between the default persp cam and any user added camera) whilst looking through that camera

natively we have access to a few ways to do this:

• ALT mouse = orbit, pan and dolly
• the camera tools menu gives the user a few more useful options, like walk, azimuth/elevation, yaw/pitch, roll, tumble, etc

What I'm looking to implement is a specifically implemented compound union of some of these options, preferably with some way to also hook that into attributes on an arbitrary rig that controls the camera (though the latter is maybe less of a priority) and assign control to arbitrary mouse/keyboard shortcuts (potentially overriding the default ones)

The end goal is a setup where I can orbit, pan, dolly (in the traditional maya sense) but also pan, tilt and roll (in the cinematographers sense of what those terms mean - ie rotation around a defined point in space used as the camera head itself, with a very specific implied order of rotation), with maybe some ability to also 'boom' the camera along some specified or implied vector, with the ability to rotate the camera from that as well (like a jib or crane type movement) - all in one tool and most importantly, interactively within the viewport

the traditional way to approach camera control is to create a camera rig within some sort of transform hierarchy with maybe some attributes setup to drive parameters of the rig. The issue with that methodology is the interactive part - there is no mechanism I am aware of in maya to allow that rig to be driven interactively from within the camera viewport itself with any real kind of artistic control (you can of course drive it from another separate perspective in a 3rd person manner but that's not what I'm after here)

the information I'm looking for would be along the lines of 'is this even possible' within the existing API and if so 'where should I be looking within the API' to do that - eg how are the inbuilt camera tool options implemented? could those be used as some sort of starting point or guide to building a plugin? (or script)

Any help most appreciated!