Subtitles of the Movie

We've brought in a model, now let's set up a scene. This Gear model is the star of our shot. Now let's move the Camera around to find the best angle for our animation. We've seen how to move the Camera's point of view via the Camera Window itself. Now I want to introduce you to the Camera Object. In the Orthographic Views we can see the Camera as long as it's turned On in the Display Elements list in the Shade Mode. By default, cameras are always displayed in every new project, so we're set. Now, let's look at the Side View. The Camera is made up of two parts: the Camera Body looks like a motion picture camera. Sticking out from that is a long, straight arrow. The tip of the arrow is the Camera Reference Point. In other words, we have a camera's head and where the camera is looking. Right now the Camera Reference is pointing at the Gear. Let's look at the Tool Palette. I want to make sure that I have the first tool, the Translation Tool, selected. I do. Back to the Side View. If I move the Camera Body in the Camera View Window, it appears as if I'm orbiting or craning up, but the Gear remains in the center of my View. If I move the Reference Point of the arrow, it looks like I'm panning away from the Gear, but my Camera Body's position has not changed. In other 3D programs, you may not have a Reference Point and the work around is usually to create a Null object to follow around. Electric Image's method is more direct and therefore, I think, a lot easier. We can also move both the Camera's Body and its Reference by dragging the line between them. This is the same as a Tracking move. Let's double-click the Camera and bring up its Info Window. We see several tabs. Let's look at X-form. Just like a model Info Window, the Camera Info Window shows its position data in 3D space, X, Y, Z. But there are two sets of numbers. One for the Camera Body, which is simply called Camera, and another set for the Reference. These fields can also be edited by typing in new values. At the bottom right we see the distance between the Camera and its Reference measured in world units. Now, just a quick aside, World Units can be anything: feet, meters, whatever you want. The units are just an arbitrary breakup into a grid of 3D space and don't really correspond to reality. Unless you are setting up your scene to reflect real world values, then the units are just a basis to set up proportions and distance. The Angles fields are Rotation values YA is Y rotation, Pitch is X rotation, and Roll is Z rotation. YA and Pitch, or Y and X are functions of the Camera to Reference. If I change the Pitch value to zero, then you can see that my Reference Height in the Y field is now exactly the same as the Y field for the Camera. Roll, or Z, is different. Roll has its own tool inside the Camera Info Window, which is the ball with the horizon line on it. If I spin the ball the Camera dips to the right or to the left. This is also called a Dutch Angle. Animating a Camera Roll is a great idea for a flying plane animation. Let's click on the next tab, FOV, or Field of View. Also, I want to turn on the checkbox on the left, Show Angle, so we can see the Camera's angle in our world views. Let's look at the Top View. This triangle coming out of the Camera Body is the Camera Angle. Like a real world camera, the Camera in Animator has a lens. The lens determines how wide a view we see of our scene. This angle is not affected by Position or Rotation of the Camera. It remains constant regardless of where I move the Camera. The only time it changes is if I zoom, which I'll now do in the Camera View. See how the angle changes? The edges of the triangle correspond to the edges in the Camera's View Window. Anything in the gray area in the Camera View is outside of the Camera's angle, and won't be seen in the render. I'm going to undo our zoom. Now let's go back to the Camera Info Window and look at the Focal Length values. The Focal Length values default to a normal viewing angle of the scene, in other words, what a human eye would see. The longer the Focal Length the narrower the Field of View, which becomes more and more like a telephoto lens. The shorter the Focal Length the larger the Field of View becomes and the wider the angle. This mimics how real world cameras' optics work by shortening the distance between the lens elements, so the wider the field of view. Let's undo that and bring up our Project Window. I have a couple of duplicates of the Skier, which I'll turn on now to better illustrate my point. Again, the smaller the value in Focal Length means a larger number in the Field of View and vice versa; the bigger the Field of View, the smaller the Focal Length. Visually a shorter Focal Length will exaggerate the apparent distance between objects and can emphasize size when the object is close to Camera. Conversely, the longer, or bigger, number in the Focal Length field seemingly compresses space so that an object that's really dozens of units away looks like it's right next to an object that's closer to Camera, as we see here.