How to create cameras?

This tutorial will describe how to create camera movements and adding camera transitions to the timeline. (This tutorial assumes a scene has been created with at least one character, and some animations on the timeline.)

1. Creating a camera hook

Once you have set up a scene, with character directions ready for shooting, it's time to create camera hooks that supports the storytelling. Open the generic radial menu and access the [camera control].

A [Camera Control] interface shows up with [camera] and [crosshair] icons. Inside the minimap, the [camera] and [crosshair] icons indicate locations of the camera and its focus from a top-down view; and the icons on the scroll bars on the right indicate their respective height. Drag the icons around and see how the view changes.

When you have a composition of shot that you like, you can store the camera position as a hook, by entering a name for it and click [store].

In the [camera hooks] section of [Camera Control] interface is a list of stored camera positions. Click on the name tag to select or deselect a camera. When a camera is selected inside the 3D scene, you can add waypoint animations to move the camera.

Beside the name tag, there are four icons:

• cursor and crosshair – select the camera focus in the scene. This is useful when you want to move the camera focus by hand, or add waypoint animations to the focus.

• eye inside a rectangle – look through the current camera

• eye – toggle visibility of the camera

• minus sign – remove camera hook

2. Animating the camera with waypoints

You can animate a created camera hook by adding waypoints to it. Select the camera in the 3D scene and open the camera specific radial menu by right click or [Space].

Similarly you can add waypoints to camera focus as well. The waypoint animations for camera and camera focus are dealt the same way as character/prop/light waypoint animations on the timeline.

The only difference for camera waypoint animations is that the direction of the camera is determined by the location of its focus, not the direction of the waypoint like other objects' waypoint animations.

3. Animating the camera by following a character/prop

To have a camera always look at or follow a moving character is done by accessing the following options in character radial menu:

• camera follow me – the camera pans and maintains the same distance with the moving character/prop without rotating

• camera look-at me – the camera stays on the spot and rotates to keep the moving character/prop in focus

Click on one of the options that suits the situation, then store the camera hook in [Camera Control] interface for making camera transitions later.

4. Animating the camera by attaching it to a character/prop

Create a camera hook first, then move the camera near a character's head. Then select the character and right click on the camera to attach the camera on the character's head.

When the character moves, you get a hand-held camera or POV camera effect.

5. Putting camera transitions on the timeline

Once you have all the camera hooks you need, you can start adding them to the desired moment on timeline. This is done by selecting the desired hook followed by [add to timeline].

After adding various camera hooks to the timeline, you see camera icons appear in the [Main Camera] channel of the timeline. These icons indicate the moment in time that camera transitions occur.

To play the scene as per the camera transitions, all you need to do is toggle the large camera icon at the bottom-right corner of [Timeline Control]. This way, the rendered movie output will also include camera transitions.

Save the scene when you are happy with the results.

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