Setting the Camera Frame

The scene action occurs inside the camera frame, so it’s really important to set it up correctly. You can adjust the camera resolution and other parameters in the Scene Settings window—see Scene Settings. If you're working in a gaming animation pipeline, you also have to possibility to set an orthographic camera—see Orthographic Camera.

The Camera layer is static which means that if you need to animate it, you must add a peg—see Animating the Camera and 3D Camera Motion.

You need to add a camera layer to your scene, so you can edit the camera frame. You can only see one camera at a time. If you add several cameras to your scene, you can use the Camera list to select the active one. You could use this feature if you are still working on your scene composition and have different camera framing to try out.

You can reposition your camera frame directly in the Camera view, using the advanced animation tools. Another way to set up your camera frame is to type the coordinates directly in the camera's properties. Doing this positions the camera precisely where you want it to be rather than gauging it visually—see Positioning an Element Using the Layer Properties View.

You can easily reset the camera to its original position. Using the Reset command, you can reset the value of the selected element to the initial value of the active tool. For example, if the Rotate tool is active, the transformation angle will be reset to 0 and if the Transform tool is active, then all parameters values will be reset.

You can change the near and far clipping planes of the camera. The near plane is the point on the camera cone where the camera is located. The far clipping plane is the far end of the camera cone. Nothing outside that range is visible. This is useful when dealing with 3D elements and 3D sets. For example, the camera can be looking inside a 3D box or room and you might want the foreground wall to not obstruct the view of the interior. By default, the near clipping plane is set to 1 field and the far clipping plane is set to 1000 fields.

Camera Clipping Planes