Attaching a security camera to a moving platform
So I am fairly new to the hammer community and tools. I have made simple maps, but now I want to work on something more unique. I want to place a security camera on a moving platform as my first part. If that is possible I would then like to make a camera on a flipping panel.
Currently I do not know how to make custom moving/flipping panel, and don't understand the tutorials because they use words I have yet to completely understand, like tying objects, and attaching objects.
Overall I need a great tutorial that can help me with a all of these problems. Thank you and I hope this all can be done!
If you have no idea on how that stuff works: Tying, attaching you should learn that first.
https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wik ... vel_Design is a great place to start.
What you want to do is parent the camera to the thing you want to move. Basically parenting tells your camera to stay at his parent, so if the parent moves so does the camera.
So yea, IF a camera can be attached you have to parent the camera to the moving platform and that should do the trick.
Thank you for the site, but while I was waiting for a response I went and learned what tying meant and how to attach blocks to panels. So I know how to make moving surfaces. Then I looked into connecting a camera in a similar fashion, but found the "npc_security_camera" has no parent parameter.
So from this point I am a little stumped. I am going to try out a few things, but if there are any other models of the security camera then the one I mentioned, that also has a parent class, I would be very happy to hear what it is. Anyways, thanks for the help, and here is to hoping this can be done!
You can disable smart edit, add a new keyvalue parent with the name of your panel as input...
IF a npc_camera can be parented, it should work, if it isn't working a npc_camera can't be parented 
Well, looks like I cant do anything to set the camera as a parent, instead I am making a "prop_dynamic" and setting the world model to the security camera, but it wont appear for some reason. So I made the camera a "npc_fruniture" and I can see it, but it wont follow the player.
If you know a way I could mimic the camera following the player it would fix everything. For now I'm going to try and angle the cameras to face them where I want them to look. Thanks for all the help so far!
I'm just wondering if cameras can be spawned by a template. So did you want the camera to look at the player while it is constantly moving on a moving platform or did you want it to move into place by a moving platform?
If it is the latter you could probably parent a dynamic model to the moving platform and when the platform stops, a template then spawns the camera.
Yeah, basically I am going to have a flipping panel that will flip once the player hits a trigger. The Security camera is going to be on the other side of the platform.
The effect I am going for is the player will enter a empty room and then once they are in the center a ton of cameras will flip out of the walls and watch the player's every move.
Ok so I've made something that can help you. As long as you don't want the rotating wall to rotate back it should look realistic.
Making this into an instance won't be too hard to do either.
Works almost perfectly, still trying to reverse engineer it to make my own version. Don't fully understand what you did, but I figured out a few things. The one that is confusing me the most is the disappearing and reappearing. Also the "real" camera gets offset in game, but if you offset the fake it works fine.
Thanks again for the help, off to go make the level!