I’m trying to switch from Maya and have a question on the camera.
In Maya, I have the ability to adjust what is called the Film Translate.
Basically, I need to be able to look through a camera with an image plane and pan around the film back. In other words, if I move the Film Translate left and right, my view pans left and right, but it moves the scene objects and image plane together.
Maya cameras also have a means to zoom into the image plane and scene objects together as well.
It’s more like you are moving the film back. So for example, what the camera is “seeing” is on the film back.
Picture a scene with a camera (with image plane with image of a pig), sphere, cube, and cone. When looking through the camera, you will see an image in your viewport containing some arrangement of these objects against the image of the pig.
If you were to zoom in or to pan or rotate the camera, the relationship between these objects would change. The image plane would however stay the same.
To make this simple, picture this setup without a moving camera.
The film back would contain the image seen through the viewport. It’s essentially the image on the film. So if you move the film back, it would be like looking at the picture you took on the film and moving it left and right. Zooming in would be like taking a magnifying glass to that image.
If you can picture it, it’s not the same as zooming the camera or panning the camera.
I imagine this can be done in blender since it’s seems so necessary to use. I’m just not real familiar with blender terminology and methods yet.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to work. That seems to be actually shifting the camera left and right or up and down. This is bringing the image plane with it so the relationship between object and image plane changes.
Moving the film back would literally be like taking a screen capture of the viewport, opening it in photoshop and panning back and forth, up and down and zooming into the image in photoshop.
That is exacly what shifting (the film plane) and change of focal length do in blender and real life. If not there is something weird going on. Would you mind uploading your .blend to check it out?
It’s definitely not doing that. My blend file is literally just a random image and a cube. Also, I’m fairly certain focal length can’t be the correct setting for zoom. The reason being is it would change the relationship between the objects and image plane. Not to mention, focal length needs to be set to a very specific setting. That can’t change.
I’m starting to think, that I’m totally misunderstanding you. So let me ask some questions.
Do you want the adjustment you are describing to render animated or just use it to set up your camera and leave the settings alone after that?
In theory, from your current settings, not speaking about render times, would it solve your problem if you rendered a much larger frame at a much higher resolution and then crop your image to the desired framing?
You basically want to do what you can do with a view camera or shift lens in real life, right?
It’s actually not for an end render. This technique has many uses, one of which I’m most interested in at the current moment is as an aid in camera matching. Many times you might “think” you have a good match, but then you pan around the camera film back and scale into it and you can see you clearly don’t have a match.
Other uses are to see greater detail into your image plane and other objects in your scene.
Another is in writing a script to “batch” render sections of a single shot on the camera film back and composite in photoshop later so you have one giant image. Think cardboard cutouts or billboard type stuff.
I’m starting to think it’s not possible… hmmmmm
Autodesk has really started getting under my skin after all these years… Really keep hoping I could switch.
Sure I can try to get some time to create a video, but it really is just plain old translating the film back of a camera. Not much else to explain I don’t think…
On another note, I’m half way to figuring out a solution, maybe. Using a combo of shift and offset image under the image plane, it “seems” to be panning the film back. I will need to check on that.
However, I still can’t find a way to zoom into the image plane/film back. If I could zoom the image plane (or size it) with a combo of sensor size, it “might” zoom into the film back.
Changing the size of the image plane seems only exist for ortho???!!! Weird.
Do you want to see it in a real render or is something like a textured viewport enough? If you dont want to alter the solved camera you could add as second one and constraint it to follow the solved one. In the second camera you are then free to adjust focal length and shift to get your desired crop. Since neither of them does change the perspective and would be perfectly suitable to render higher resolution crops.
There is also an add on which lets you animate a render border, did not try it since I don’t do much animation but there might be a way to make it follow the camera and provide some workaround. Don’t remember the addons name
Can anybody tell me if there is a possible way to size the image plane in a non-orthographic camera?
I do appreciate everybody’s help. Just a little background so you know where I’m coming from. I’ve been using Maya since the 90’s and have worked at places like Sony Pictures Imageworks so I’m not a complete noob to 3D just Blender . Just wanting to be able to utilize a camera how they should be.
np, just wanted to be clear with what is that you want to achieve
would be much easier to explain by simply showing a sketch
is it - Film Back 101 (hints are at the bottom)
along shift, can sensor size and focal length be also of assistance?
yes, it works in Perspective, too
I’m very close. The only thing that seems to be missing is being able to size the image plane. Haven’t figured that out yet. Once that is figured out, I could script a tool.
Jesus, just realized you where not talking about the plane where the image is projected on the sensor but a plane with an image texture. Sorry for that!
You would have to do some math to offset and scale the plan as a function of shift and focal length or try increasing the resolution and cropping in with a render border to render out an animation.
I actually do mean the plane where the image is projected on the sensor. Look here for a better explanation of this stuff…
In that link they are referring to film offset which is another attribute which can be animated on the Maya camera. The Film Translate does the same thing. It appears that in Blender the attribute to do this is Shift. But… Blender does not seem to do the same thing. It will shift the view, but not the image plane which is odd. However, I can also offset the image plane so I think this can work.
The next problem to solve though, is being able to scale the film back. In Blender, this appears to be the sensor Size attribute. However, like the Shift attribute in Blender, it does not seem to affect the image plane which is odd. So the last key to this is to be able scale the image plane which does not seem possible.
With regards to the info you gave in the link it is interesting how he is using a textured plane fit to the camera. I trying to think about if that might be able to work for this.
The only question I have is why did he do that and not use a regular image plane?
Using a combo of shift and offset image under the image plane, it “seems” to be panning the film back. I will need to check on that.