+ A0006 - How to use camera in After Effects CS3 ?+
Instructor - Pradeep Mamgain
+ Camera +
In this tutorial we will learn about the various options and techniques available to handle camera operations in After Effects CS3.
Download the project and open 01 – Creating 3D Camera comp. By default AE gives you one virtual camera however you cannot use Camera Tools in this virtual camera. As you can see camera tool icon is disabled in the tool bar.
However when you change view to any orthographic view or custom view, you can use the camera tools. Press C key to toggle through the camera tools. A small black square in front of the tool options represents the active tool.
Now create a new Camera by choosing Layer > New > Camera from the main menu or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C shortcut. A new dialogue box appears from here you can enter your own settings or choose most commonly used film camera preset from the dropdown.
As you can see that Focal Length is locked to the Zoom. So if we add a 20 mm camera it will be placed closer then the 35 mm camera in the 3D world. To demonstrate this, add three cameras 50mm, 35mm and 20mm. Switch to top view and you can see that blue camera (50mm) is placed farthest from the comp origin. When you reduce the lens size camera moves closer to the center of the comp. If you have multiple cameras, camera at the top of the layer stack get precedence. Now delete the 20mm and 50 mm camera.
Switch to Active camera view and play with the camera tools. Now camera tool button is enabled because now we have added a camera to the comp and we are no more relying on the default virtual camera. Twirl down the 35mm cam options and you will see that apart from regular transform options. There are Camera Options as well that were in the dialogue when we added camera. You can also press AA on the keyboard to open the camera options.
Note that there is no Scale property in the Transform and a new property called Point of Interest. You can invoke this property by pressing “A” key on the keyboard. Point of interest is currently located at the center of our composition.
Switch to top view. When you change the X value for point of interest, you move the point of interest or change the point camera is looking at. You are not rotating the camera but changing the focus point of the camera. Like any other 3D tool you can move the camera using the selection tool and dragging the axis handle and the point of interest moves with the camera but if you drag the body camera moves and point of interest remains stationery. To animate the camera and point of interest, you have to keyframe the position of the camera as well as the point of interest. You can invoke these two properties by pressing P and followed by Shift + A.
The easy way to animate a camera is to add a Null object and parent camera to it. Null objects are non-renderable objects. Open up the comp 02 – Creating 3D Camera 2 Start and jump to the start of the timeline by pressing the home key. Create a new Null object and rename it as Camcontrol. Parent Cam to the CamControl and make CamControl 3D. Now switch to the top of the view. Now we will animate the camera but you might find some problem in viewing the camera. Click on the arrow icon at the top left corner of the top view and choose View Options. Change Camera Wireframes option to On. Now you have the visible representation of the camera Wireframe in the view.
Now we will animate the camera to make a full revolution of the text. Twirl down the Null transform attributes and set a keyframe for the Y rotation. Jump to end of the timeline and set enter value 1 that is one full revolution.
Press 0 on Number pad to generate a quick RAM preview. If your point of interest is off-center you can set this from Camera options. Change value for X & Y Point of Interest value to 28 & 84 and also change the Z Position value to –1260 to push camera back. Your values may be different according to your settings.
Press 0 on Number pad to see a RAM preview. You might have noticed that text turns to a thin object around frame 20. This happens because by default layer orientation towards camera is always off. To turn it on, select all text layers and choose Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient or press Ctrl+Alt+O on the keyboard and select Orient Towards Camera.
Now the layers are always facing the camera. This wraps up the tutorial.
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