How To Change Camera To Default In Cinema 4d

Becoming a Camera Master in Cinema 4D

If you're new to working with cameras in Cinema 4D, the info below will help you step up your game. Since cameras in Cinema 4D are modeled on what real world cameras can do (and then some), information technology's helpful to encompass some basic photography principles. Download the case .c4d files and follow along.

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Focal Length

Without getting overly technical, focal length of a camera lens defines how broad or narrow y'all tin see. Create a Cinema 4D camera object (Create menu > Camera >Photographic camera) and y'all'll find the focal length nether the object properties in the Aspect Manager. A small focal length like 10mm-15m is considered super wide while a long focal length like 100-200mm is considered telephoto.

Generally, with longer lenses, you'll take to back up the camera further away to fit the subject in the frame. With shorter lenses, the opposite is true. Only try non to get toooo shut, right Volition?

In that location'south tons more to exist covered regarding focal length so if you desire to learn more here'due south a smashing place to read more (if you're into that sort of matter.

If we animate along to short focal length while simultaneously animating the photographic camera getting closer to the subject we can get some dope results. This is called the dolly zoom consequence (thanks Irmin Roberts) which you've no doubt seen before thanks to some dudes named Hitchcock & Spielberg. Ya might have heard of em.

F-Stop & Depth of Field (DOF)

On a real photographic camera, F-stop controls how large the opening of a lens is (and how much light gets in) just also how much depth of field (the range of what'southward focused & blurry) the image has. This article goes into the nuts & bolts of it, but to simplify things, we more often than not demand to know that: Lower F-Stops = shallower depth of field (more blurry BG & FG)

College F-stops = deeper depth of field (less blurry BG & FG)If you're going for photorealism when working with cameras in Cinema 4D, any version of C4D except Calorie-free and Prime can recreate these DOF furnishings by using the Physical Renderer. To enable it, go to the Return menu > Edit Render Settings and make sure 'Physical' is selected from the drop downwardly menu. Too nether the Physical options > Basic tab enable Depth of Field.

Depth of Field Tip: Creating your scenes using real world calibration will become y'all predictable results. If your scene is larger or smaller than existent world, y'all'll have to exaggerate the F-cease values to compensate (ie F/0.025 instead of F/1.4 for shallow DOF)

Focus

Now that you've introduced DOF, how do you decide what'due south in focus? Nether the Object tag of the camera object you ascertain the focus distance numerically or striking the pick pointer icon to select the object in the viewport you desire in focus. Once you start animating the camera however, both of these approaches pretty much break since you'll then demand to animate the focus distance to maintain focus. Boo. That'due south where the Focus Object comes in...

You tin can 'lock in' your focus by only dragging an object into this field and no matter where you camera moves, the focus sticks. To become fifty-fifty more than flexibility, apply a Null object as your focus object. This way you can animate it (or not) and go like shooting fish in a barrel visual feedback directly in the viewport as to where your focus is.

enable snapping to easily lock the focus object in identify

Exposure

At this point, since this is 3D, we're kinda cheating in that we're getting a perfect exposure every time regardless of our F-Terminate. You can read about how F-Stop relates to exposure here.

To recreate photorealistic over and underexposures using F-stops, we have to enable the 'exposure' option in the photographic camera's Physical tab. By changing our F-stop to a college value, we commencement to under expose and subtract or depth of field, while smaller F-Stops overexpose and increase our DOF. Just like in the existent world, we tin adjust the shutter speed to compensate for the exposure.

Shutter Speed

Speaking of shutter speed, we can use it to control how much motion blur appears in our renders. Get the low down on shutter speed hither. When working with cameras in Cinema 4D we tin control how much or how little motion blur appears past dialing up or down the shutter speed.

Making the Camera Motility

To move the camera every bit you view thru information technology make sure that you've got the camera selected by either enabling the active camera push in the object director, or selecting the camera via the viewport carte > Cameras> Use Camera. Once you're viewing thru the camera, you can use the same navigation tools used to motility/rotate/zoom in the viewport. Of course y'all're also free to motility & rotate the camera from other views every bit well, grabbing the axis handles of the selected photographic camera.

Here's a little bonus tip to combat something that'due south probably already happened to you when working with cameras in Movie theater 4D: As you're orbiting the photographic camera in the perspective view, you might accidentally orbit the camera in a 2D view, which can bulldoze you to wanna dropkick kitty cats. Before yous requite erstwhile Garfield the kicking, simply hold downward Shift + alt/selection every bit y'all drag the 2nd view back into place. Meow-zaa!

Photographic camera Rigs in Cinema 4D

Animating the photographic camera tin can exist as uncomplicated as dragging it effectually the scene and setting keyframes but if you lot want to level up your moves and take an easier fourth dimension doing information technology, you'll want to employ some kind of camera rig. Rigs tin can get as complex every bit y'all need so start with these simple ones to see what options open up for you.

one. SIMPLE CAMERA RIG (2 NODE)

This 1 involves using a couple of null objects that help separate out a few tasks, specifically we'll separate what the camera is pointed at and what the camera orbits effectually. If yous're an After Effects user, you might recognize this as a two node camera. Add together two new nulls & rename one 'Target' and the other "Parent".Select your camera and right click > Cinema 4D Tags > Target. If yous can guess past the proper name, this tag points the camera to any is defined in the target object tag, in this example drib the 'Target' null in and the camera should now betoken to information technology. Make the camera a child of the 'Parent' zero. Now if you move the parent, the camera follows but stays aimed at our 'Target' cypher. Sweet, right?! Switch to the rotate tool and rotate the 'Parent' null for make clean arcs that orbit around the 'Parent' position. The great thing about this setup is that once you've animated the target and parent nulls, you nonetheless have the freedom to animate the camera object itself.

2. Elementary CAMERA RIG (SPLINES)

This 2d rig uses splines to draw out the path the photographic camera will follow. Draw out a path using the pen tool (Create carte > Spline > Pen). On your camera, correct click > Cinema 4D Tags > Align to Spline. On the tag you just added, drib your spline object into the spline path. Boom! All you need to do now is breathing the 'Position' property of the tag to make the camera move along the spline.

Some spline path tips for ya: If you're going for all smooth arcs, draw out your path using B-Splines (Pen Tool > Type > B-Spline). It'll smooth out every bit much as possible between two points, making your life easier. Secondly, if you don't have a target tag on your camera, you tin can make the camera look down the path like when you ride a roller coaster. Only hit the 'tangential' button on the Align to Spline Tag.

One nice advantage about this arroyo is yous can more easily adjust your photographic camera path after the fact. Only select the points in your spline object and tweak. Uh oh, the customer just chosen and wants the camera to orbit all the computers? No sweat!

Select the points of the spline & scale. Dunzo.

Another advantage is that y'all divide the timing of the camera movement from the shape of the motion itself. The path has the move, and the marshal to spline has the timing. The camera movement higher up uses only 2 keyframes on the align to spline instead of 5 or more keyframing the camera directly.

VIBRATE TAG

Sometimes you want to add a petty human element to your camera moves, maybe to give off a handheld vibe. In that case add a Vibrate tag to your camera and enable rotation and/or position with pocket-size values.