Cameras & Navigation

27/11/2011

Hi, people! :D

Lately, I've received several emails asking for this tutorial, and also, as some changes have been made in Blender during the last months, I decided to make a clear explanation in all the techniques I know for navigating through the 3D scene. Blender puts at our disposal a lot of tools for navigating in the scene, position cameras, flying around, interacting with objects... From options in the User preferences, to hotkeys, a lot of things have impact on how we navigate.

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I hope you've understood everything shown in this tutorial, and if you aren't new to Blender, maybe you learned a few little tricks ;)

See you!

 

 

Level: 
Beginner
Tags: 
camera navigation blender tutorial

Comments

Submitted by Craigah on Sun, 27/11/2011 - 15:04
great tut, love your style, thought you would mention changing camera with Markers in the timeline. curser over timeline, "M" / choose active camera, then view (from timeline) Ctrl+B So with 2 or more cameras you can control from what camera blender renders from, and see it in the timeline.
Submitted by oliver villar on Mon, 28/11/2011 - 00:02

Thanks, Craigah ;) I thought about that, but the tutorial was already becoming quite long, so I thought I'd better left that for an advanced tut in the future :)

Thanks for the comment! ;)

Submitted by Víctor Galdón on Mon, 28/11/2011 - 07:33
Very complete :) Thanks Victor
Submitted by dandellion Kimban on Wed, 30/11/2011 - 05:46
Thanks for all the tutorials!
Submitted by jordi on Wed, 30/11/2011 - 12:23
great tutorial! Very useful tricks which I really need to know! :D
Submitted by abraham on Wed, 30/11/2011 - 22:48

Very good Oliver... !!!

Submitted by Terry on Fri, 02/12/2011 - 04:20
Very nice tutorial. I like the pace of your videos, so relaxing to watch. Thanks
Submitted by Space on Sun, 04/12/2011 - 00:22
Very very cool tutorial again. ^^
Submitted by Matthew Merkovich on Thu, 08/12/2011 - 04:33
Awesome tutorials Oliver. One thing. After you locked the camera to view, how did you zoom the render area to fill the perspective viewport? I hope this question makes sense. I just started using Blender and you are really helping.
Submitted by Matthew Merkovich on Thu, 08/12/2011 - 07:17
To be clearer, how do I make the Passepartout area as big as the camera perspective viewport?
Submitted by Matthew Merkovich on Thu, 08/12/2011 - 08:40
One more thing. My mouse doesn't have a wheel. I was reading somewhere that you can use a mouse wheel to do this. Can it be done without a mouse wheel?
Submitted by electrohermit on Sat, 10/12/2011 - 02:36
Great job Oliver! The videos and website are very well executed and a pleasure to watch. You also cover all the small details that others sometimes miss, it's very impressive. These are some of the best tutorials I've seen put up on the web ever. seriously.
Submitted by Apos on Tue, 13/12/2011 - 21:39

I thought I knew how to navigate...

Submitted by markfrancombe on Fri, 16/12/2011 - 20:43
Thanks for that, I have one request, that you could put a list somewhere of all the tuts, IN ORDER. I did one tut then when I cam back to the site couldnt find it, or which to do next. Maybe they are not planned to be in a specific order, but for the TOTAL NEWB, it might be handy to have your suggestion on this?
Submitted by Apos on Mon, 19/12/2011 - 03:52

I'm guessing this is what you want: http://www.blendtuts.com/blender_tutorials

Submitted by mayafx on Sat, 17/12/2011 - 08:41
Fine tut and clear explanation ,will learn a lot from you...!
Submitted by mark francombe on Tue, 20/12/2011 - 15:38
One thing that I have problems with (coming from Maya) is simply SELECTING... If I have a number of objects in the scene, how do I simply select one over another??? Seems so simple. The way I have been getting around it is by clicking the object name in the little hierarchical menu on the top right. But how do I just click? And what is it called in the prefs (I changed mine to use the maya settings at first, then went back to the default blenderones, and just editted the setting for moving to use ALT + buttons, insted of middle mouse an dright click.. maybe that was wrong, could I have over-written a standard selection method?)
Submitted by ratty redemption on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 18:40

the default settings for selecting objects, verts etc in the 3d view is right mouse button. you can also use the b key and then drag out a selection box anywhere on the 3d view to select all objects, verts within the box. if you want to deselect/toggle a specific object, vert, you can hold down shift and right click mouse, or use the a key to toggle selections of all objects, verts. hth

Submitted by overkill on Thu, 12/01/2012 - 02:41

Don't know how I missed this one. Once again, your attention to detail is amazing. That's why I love Blendtuts!

Submitted by ratty redemption on Thu, 02/02/2012 - 18:33

hi oliver, i've used 2.49b for years but am now only making the move to the new 2.5/2.6 interface, your videos have been very informative and have been a joy to watch, i do miss the background music though, i'm aware some users complained about it but i hope you bring it back in the near future or if possible provide two videos, one with the music and one without. i personally find it helps me relax more which makes the learning more effective.

Submitted by SH_P on Wed, 29/08/2012 - 21:49

Great tutorial!
Just one question, There is no "Lock to Object" option in the camera preferences. (Although there is one for the viewport.) So how should I lock a camera view on an object?
Thanks

Submitted by oliver villar on Thu, 30/08/2012 - 09:27

Hi :) Yes, that's only in the viewport, while working in the 3D view. If you want to have a camera focused on an object, then you should consider using a constraint, for example a Track To constraint.
1- Select the object, then the camera, and press Shift+C.
2- Pick the Track To constraint, and now, when moving your camera, it should focus to that object, always :)

Hope it helps!

Submitted by xadow999 on Tue, 15/01/2013 - 06:20
I like the old background music. Its more relaxing.
Submitted by oliver villar on Tue, 15/01/2013 - 09:08

Hi xadow999 :) Thanks, but a lot of people preferred no music because it was distracting for them, or just because they prefer to play their own music in the background :P

Submitted by nelliejohnson on Sat, 23/02/2013 - 11:01
Thanks for sharing important details about camera navigation.

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