- [Instructor] So far in this course,
we've used the target camera.
Now let's talk about the free camera
which does not have a look-at point.
For a physical camera when we create it,
it always has a target, but we can turn that target off.
I'll select my camera, go into the modify panel
and right at the top in the basic parameters,
we have a checkbox labeled targeted.
If we turn that off, we've basically hidden the target.
It's actually still there,
it's just, we can't select it
or use it to manipulate the camera's rotation.
We know that that target's still there
because we have a target distance
and if we click and drag on that, we can see
that the frustum,
which is this trapezoidal volume indicating the area
of the scene that's within the camera's field of view,
that frustum changes
when we set the target distance differently.
So for our free camera, we can just rotate it directly.
Go to the rotate tool and go to the top view,
right click in that view
and rotate around the world Z axis to pan.
Okay, we'll talk more about camera rotations
in subsequent movies
but that'll get us started with the concept here.
We can, of course, use the standard controls
that we saw previously to navigate in a first-person method
but for our free camera,
actually rotating it in the top view
is the best way to pan the camera.
Now let's talk about the standard camera.
We can create a standard camera
that's either targeted or free,
so I'll go to the create panel
and then we can go to cameras
and we see physical, target and free.
Remember that the physical camera will always have a target
when it's created.
The standard camera
can be created as a free camera directly.
Now just as for a physical camera,
the view port in which you create the camera is important.
So it's different for a target camera versus a free camera.
Target cameras should be created in a top
or perspective view
and that will cause the camera
to be aligned correctly with your scene.
If you want to create a free camera, it needs to be created
in a left, right or front or back view port.
And that's because the camera's going to be created
pointing into the current scene
or into the current construction plane.
So to illustrate, if I click on free
to create a free standard camera
and I click in the top view,
it'll be pointed down in the scene.
We can see that in the left view port here.
Okay, I'll undo that with Control + Z.
Likewise, if we try to create a free camera
in a perspective or another camera view port,
it will be pointed down in the world axis.
So it'll be down in world Z.
All right, so I'll undo that with Control + Z.
So we need to create a free camera
in the left, right, front or back view port.
I got my left view here, so I'll just click in there.
And now that free camera has been created
and I can right click to exit out of creation mode.
We can load that camera into a panel.
We've got a physical camera panel here,
click on the view port name or label PhysCamera001,
go to cameras, we have camera 001.
It's not a physical camera.
It's just an ordinary standard camera.
Choose that and now we're looking
through that camera's lens.
And once again, we can rotate that,
we can grab our rotate tool,
right click so we don't lose our selection
and rotate in the top view, pan around,
and of course we have all the same controls.
We can grab the move tool and move that camera around.
The only real difference
is that we don't have a look-at point or a target.
Let's take a look at the standard camera parameters.
Go to the modified panel
and we see it has some of the same parameters
as a physical camera.
We have a field of view in degrees
that controls whether we have a wide angle
or a tight angle or telephoto shot.
We have, for example,
the ability to show the cone, which is the frustum.
If that's on, then even if the camera is deselected,
we'll still see that frustum.
We can turn that back off again.
Or we could enable a target.
We have the type pull down, it says free.
We could turn target on.
So now we have a target camera and we can select that target
and move that around in order to pan or rotate the camera.
Okay, I'll select the camera again
and set it's type back to free
but the standard camera doesn't have any
of the optical properties that a physical camera does.
There's no sensor size and there's no focal length.
So it's extremely difficult if not impossible
to make a standard camera match some real world camera
that has a sensor and has a focal length.
So you really won't use a standard camera very much,
if at all,
there are only very rare occasions in which you might.
One I can think of
would be if you're using the Quicksilver hardware renderer
and you want to get a motion blur effect
then you would need to use a standard camera
but that's a really rare situation.
You'll almost always use a physical camera and of course,
select that physical camera and you can choose
whether or not you want it to be targeted.