Shortcut? Attach to normals
 

I know its relatively easy to do this the hard way (manually keyframe), but say you have a car, and you want the cam to stick to the hood, back door, or something (basically simulate a camcar, headcam, or something) so basically if you move the object in any direction, the camera will follow, and stay attached to the same face oriented the same way relative to the face.

ex:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3.../question2.jpg

Sure -- thats of a live animation, but the way the camera is rigged is similar to my thought. Stuck to the hood of the car pointed in a certain direction while the object animated throughout the world.

ifi understand your question well... which you did not quite ask....

you're looking to point constrain, or parent, or parent constrain or or even geometry constrain....

Kind-of did ask it actually... probably too much example, not enough question mark (typical of me).

Question: I have a camera, and an object (lets say a car) -- is there any way I can duct-tape the camera to a specified polygon/place on the car (lets say the hood) -- throughout the duration of the animation -- rotating/translating exactly as the polygon its on does?

Re: Shortcut? Attach to normals
 

actually you didnt ask a question at all.
anyway,
what you are looking for if you just need rotation and translation is
parent constrain. or just parent,
however if u for some reason want to have the camera matche the "deformation" of the hood of the car, assuming the car will crash or bend, and u still want the cam to match the facing ratio of a single poly face, use the normal constrain.

Thanks, I'll try it out when I get a chance.

Trying to create a video with a motorbike escape scene. (It'll then be BINK!'d and placed in a videogame as a cutscene). I never actually needed to use this sort of camera sequence before -- I traditionally favour the fixed-cam system, though path-animated does pop up from time to time :b

Not all too good at Maya, however... I started out as just a standard modeller using the program "Rhino".