Camera Object

Every scene needs at least one camera object. Without a camera object you can see only a grey background in the 3D view. It is possible to put as many cameras as you want into the scene but only one camera can be active at once. The active camera is the camera through which you look.

The icon of the active camera will be highlighted in the object browser, so that you can easily recognize which camera is currently active. The active camera is the camera through which you look through when you choose "Scene camera" in the tool bar of the 3D view.

Properties

  • Projection:
    • Perspective: The perspective projection is the default camera projection. It's comparable to a real world camera.
    • Panormama: Use the panorama camera projection for rendering 360°x180° panorama images.
    • Orthographic: Use the orthographic camera projection for rendering front, back, bottom, top, etc. views.
  • Field of view: Field of view of the camera. The bigger the field of view, the more of the scene you can see.
  • Zoom: The zoom factor (camera hight) of the orthographic camera projection.
  • Clip near: The distance to the near clipping plane. Every primitive which is in front of the near clipping plane will be removed by OpenGL.
  • Clip far: The distance to the far clipping plane. Every primitive which is behind the far clipping plane will be removed by OpenGL.
  • Camera light: Every active camera has it's own camera light. That is the reason why even a scene without a light source is illuminated. Disable this property if you don't need the camera light anymore. For example when you've set up your own light sources manually.
  • Make active camera: Press this button if you want to make the currently selected camera the active one. After clicking this button the icon of the selected camera should be highlighted. You can also make the camera the active camera by double clicking onto the object icon in the object browser.
  • Shutter time: The shutter time of the camera. The longer the shutter time to more pronounced is the motion blur effect.
  • Aperture size: The aperture size determines how strong the depth of field effect. Bigger aperture sizes cause a more pronounced depth of field effect.
  • Aperture blades: The number of aperture blades. This value influences how the Bokeh effect is calculated. If you set the aperture baldes value to 0, a circular aperture is used.
  • Aperture rotation: The rotation the aperture. This value has no effect if the aperture is circular (aperture blades=0).
  • Focal distance: The focal distance of the camera. Object which are near the focal distance appear sharp. Objects which are closer or more distant away appear blurred.
  • Focus object: Use this property if you want that the camera automatically focuses on a certain object. This is especially helpfull when rendering animated objects.
  • Display DOF-Grid: Turn this property on if you want to see the plane of focus.
  • Background color: Background color for the preview and rendering facilities. Setting this to a transparent colour will result in an image with a properly rendered alpha channel.
  • Background image: Background image/movie for the preview and rendering facilities.