This rig is a part of my Maya camera rig creation project. If you want to learn more about the rigs I have made you can see the whole project here. All rigs are available to download and are free to use.

Handheld is one of the most common types of camera rigs. They are typically used to increase intensity or intimacy in a shot. Since the camera is handheld, shots from these rigs are naturally shaky.

There are a lot of different rigs for handheld cameras, so I decided to make a list of what I wanted in my rig before I started to make it.

• Have different positions that it can be held in
  • Over the shoulder
  • In hand
• Need to have controls for camera shake
• Can be attached to Tripod for a different rig set up so that it's model can used for that rig

The look of the rig did not matter that much since there are so many different handheld rigs. So I decided to go with the design of the rig below because it fits the list of requirements I had for the rig.

The first thing that I did was begin working on the camera rig model based on the picture above. I didn't make it as detailed as the picture because it's for visualization for the person working with the camera and would not be seen in any final shots.

As I worked on the model I started planning out the controls and how the rig would actually work. I decided to make the controls that move the camera light red and the other controls dark red. I wanted all of the controls to have the same color scheme and not look distracting.

This is the final version of the rig that I ended up making. It has six controls in total, however there are two controls that move the camera and only one can be active at a time.

Handheld Camera Rig Overview

https://www.loom.com/embed/2da1b18a5ae5467da16491801c236202

Main Control

This is a control for simply moving, moving, scaling, and changing the visibility of the rig.

Switch Shake Control

The control can change whether the rig is being held from the top or bottom handles as well as change the camera's shake. In the picture, you can see the bright red control above the camera which is the control for the top handle. When changing the Follow Hand Or Shoulder control, the bright red control in the image (Shoulder Control) will become invisible and the bright red control for holding the camera from the top handle will appear. The rest of the rig will follow which of those two controls is currently being used except for the main control.