| Format | Lens Shaders
The camera property editor contains every parameter needed to define how a camera "sees" your scene.
To display, do one of the following:
Select a camera whose properties you want to edit and choose Modify 
Shader from the Render toolbar.
Click on the Camera icon under the Camera_Root node in the explorer.
From the camera icon menu of any viewport set to the camera's view, choose Properties.
For procedures about working with cameras in general, see Cameras [Cameras and Motion Blur].
Controls the basic properties of the selected camera, including the projection, field of view, and clipping planes.
| Allow Autokey during Navigation |
Allows navigation (zooming, panning, etc.) to be keyed automatically using autokey while looking through the camera in a 3D view. This works only for scene cameras, not for viewpoints like the Top, Front, Right, User, and Object views. The camera navigation parameters that get autokeyed are:
For a complete description, see Autokeying Camera Navigation [Viewing and Playback]. |
| Save Key |
Sets keys on the parameters listed above at the current frame. |
| Remove Key |
Removes any keys on the parameters listed above from the current frame. |
The camera's "format" refers to the picture standard that the camera is using and the corresponding picture ratio. You can also specify a custom picture standard with a picture ratio that you define.
You can set a default camera picture standard for all of the cameras in the scene, see Setting Output Format Preferences [Rendering].
The field of view is the angular measurement of how much the camera can see at any one time. By changing the field of view, you can distort the perspective to give a narrow, peephole effect or a wide, fish-eye effect.
Each camera projection type has its own default field of view. For example, a wide-angle projection has a large field of view, whereas a telephoto camera has a smaller field of view. You can edit these cameras' fields of view at any time.
Field of View settings have no effect on orthographic cameras. Instead, you can adjust the Ortho Height parameter to include more or less of the scene in the camera's view.
The formulas to determine your horizontal or vertical Field of View are as follows:
Specifies the type of projection used by the camera. You can easily change any camera from an orthographic to a perspective projection.
You can use clipping planes to set the minimum and maximum viewable distances from the camera. Objects outside these planes are not visible and will not render. You can sometimes reduce rendering time by choosing appropriate clipping planes.
By default, the near clipping plane is very close to the camera and the far clipping plane is far away, so most objects are usually visible. You can set clipping planes to display or hide specific objects.
Setting up a camera using the options on the Primitive tab allows you to control how much of the scene the camera sees by adjusting the Projection Plane. However, this is sometimes not sufficient to configure the camera properly — particularly when you need to match a virtual camera to a real-world camera's specifications. You can use the projection plane controls to adjust the field of view more precisely and replicate lens offsets.
For example, real world cameras have lenses that are mounted offset from the center of the image plane, so that the apex of the viewing frustum is offset from the center of the rendered image. On many cameras, the lens offset (called shift) is adjustable and allows you to reposition the lens while keeping the camera body, and thus the film plane, fixed. Lens shift is often used for architectural photography because it can help correct perspective distortion or even maintain perspective while changing the composition of the picture.
Also, a real world camera's field of view is a function of both the lens' focal length (55mm, 85mm, 135mm, "wide-angle", "telephoto", and so on) and the dimensions of the area onto which an image is projected by the lens. Different types of cameras have characteristic image area dimensions that vary not only from one product to another, but from one camera to another, because of inaccuracies in the manufacture of mechanical, optical, and electronic components (film gates, CCDs, etc.).
"Stacks" lens shaders in the camera shader stack. You can define in what order the shaders will be computed as well as edit each one individually.
For a complete procedure on how to do this, see Applying Lens Shaders to Cameras [Cameras and Motion Blur].
Toggles different display options that are useful when using camera rigs.
| View Volumes |
Toggles the display of the frustums (cones) for the selected cameras in all views. See Displaying the Camera Cones (Frustum) [Cameras and Motion Blur] for more information. |
| Stereo Zero Parallax Plane |
Toggles the display of the zero parallax planes for the center stereo camera in all views. Make sure that the stereo camera isn't hidden. See Setting the Zero Parallax Plane [Cameras and Motion Blur] for more information. |
