Getting Started with Cinema 4D, Part 16: Introduction to Cameras

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Instructor eyedesyn

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In this video, you will be introduced to the Camera Object and learn how to frame your composition.

In this video, you will be introduced to the Camera Object and learn how to frame your animation using the Composition Helpers.

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Transcript

With our scene all set up, it's time to frame up our shot using a Cinema 4D camera. Now the camera system inside a Cinema 4D is really intuitive and easy to use and it even includes some handy tools to help guide a perfect shot composition. So let's go ahead and dive right in. So you can find your cameras in this little camera menu here. If you click and hold, we'll just grab a normal camera. Now to actually look through the view of this camera we need to ensure that this little viewfinder icon is highlighted so I'm just going to click on it to activate it and you'll see that now we're actually looking through our camera's view. And if we go to our for up view and just kind of zoom out here you can see there is our camera. Now if I move my view and use my shortcut keys, the one two three keys, you'll see that this is actually changing the position of our camera. Okay? So with the camera in our scene, I'll just go back to my full-screen perspective mode, we can adjust some of the camera options. Now the cameras in Cinema 4D have a lot of the same settings as cameras do in real life. So we have our focal length, our sensor size. So we have a collection of all these different types of lenses that are inspired from real life. So like a 50-millimeter kind of portrait lens but depending on the type of vibe or feel you're going for, maybe you want something super dramatic so you'll go super wide. And if I zoom in here you're going to see that we have that really dramatic depth perspective there or if we want something very flat, we can use a telephoto and this is a nice kind of style I like to use for more isometric type of compositions. It basically just flattens out all of your composition and removes a lot of that depth perspective and lens distortion. So we also have all these different projections here. So we have parallel which again removes all of that depth perspective and that's one I like to use a lot for more stylized composition. We also have isometric here which you can see that we can't actually rotate around so if you want some flat isometric looks, be sure to just stay in the parallel because then you can easily change the angle of view there. So typically you're going to live in the perspective view. We have a lot of different types of projection but I would say that perspective and parallel are probably the two most useful and most often used projections inside of Cinema 4D. So once you're done kind of choosing your focal length, and I'm just going to choose a focal length of 50, you can kind of set things up the way you want. If we go into the physical tab, all these physical settings coincide with how an actual real camera would work. So if you want to say have your lights a little brighter or less bright, we can change the f stop and this will also change the depth of field. Okay. So a lot of these settings have to do with realistic physical camera settings. Now if we go into the details here, this is where you can set up your depth of field. So basically the field of view and if I click on this little dots you can see I'm actually adjusting the focus length and you can see this is actually updating the focus distance here. So when you have the object that you want to focus in on and you want to add depth the field basically you can control the depth of field map in the front in the back. So what's happening is whatever is right at that focus distance which is right about here, that's going to be in focus and then from this point to the rear of this little wireframe camera box is going to be blurred. So basically whatever is from here to this little point in this little wireframe camera box is going to slowly go from 100% crispness to being completely blurred out. And similarly with the front blur whatever starts here at the focus distance and then towards this point is going to go from being in focus to being out of focus. So you can play around with those settings. And one really handy feature in a Cinema 4D camera is these composition helpers. Now what this allows you to do is throw on and activate say a grid that will help you ensure that your composition or your object is perfectly centered. Okay? So if we didn't have this we really wouldn't have any sense of is this completely aligned up to the center. But if we have grids, if we have a diagonal, we have a golden section, we have a bunch of different things to help with the composition and just the framing of your shot, okay. So really handy stuff here. We can also adjust how many cells are in this grid and we can even change the color to something that might pop a little more say on this blue background, maybe we'll get some, you know, magenta and that shows a little bit better or maybe just some yellow, something that pops a little bit more, but we have all these different options for all of these different types of composition helpers. So here you can easily utilize the rule of thirds and the golden spiral the golden ratio in all of your animations and your compositions. So in Cinema 4D cameras you can not only just play the mode graph artist but the director of cinematography and this is one area that's actually well informed by traditional photography and cinematography fundamental so the more you know about those real life subjects the better off you'll be in the world of 3D.
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