Hi. I’m a longtime Maya user, but it’s time to learn Blender. I’m doing The Doughnut tutorial. I’ve got things going pretty well, but when I render, my render seems to place my camera far away. The lineup appears to be the same; it’s just that my camera seems to have been pulled back along its line of sight.
I also notice that I cannot see the passepartout while looking through the camera. It’s on, and its opacity is set to 0.5, but it’s not visible.
(I’m using the Industry Compatible keymap, by the way.)
What am I missing?
TIA
Hi, thanks for your reply.
On my setup, scrolling appears to translate the camera along the camera’s line of sight. I can see the camera in the panel on the left pushing in and out as I scroll the wheel on my mouse.
Also, no matter how far I scroll out, I never see the Passepartout mask.
However, is there a feature that zooms in and out within a camera view? If so, how can you tell that you’re zoomed in within a camera view?
Sounds like you have locked your camera to view. All moves (pans, zooms, etc.) move your camera object. It’s an easy fix. Hover your mouse over your camera preview in your 3D Viewport, and press N to bring up the sidebar. Find the checkbox that says “Lock camera to View” and uncheck it. That’s it!
Here’s a link to the manual page that talks about that feature:
What you see in the render is what the camera is seeing. Lock camera to view is probably the culprit for the too close screen view. Uncheck that box and zoom/scroll out until you see the cam bounds/passpartout. Then check the box to lock it like that. The bounds/passpartout will stay in place on the screen now and you are looking through the camera’s eye so that is what will render.
Press “N” -> View Tab -> View Lock -> Camera to View.
As you saw scroll wheel and “zoom” mean move in/out in that context. If you want to zoom like a real camera with distortion and FOV changes that is Focal Length in the camera object’s settings.
Ah! @Hunkadoodle and his amazingly positive happy avatar that always cheers me up already said this.
Hi, thanks for your reply!
Yes, I’m aware of the View Lock feature, and I was using it in order to interactively place my camera. However, I had not specified the camera in the “lock to object” window. I guess I need to tinker with it in order to get a better understanding of exactly how this feature works.
Regardless, tinkering with it a bit, I managed to fix the problem. Thank you so much!
If I may ask a follow-up question…
When not looking through the camera, there’s the “User Perspective” view. It’s got to be sort of like a camera under the hood, in order to allow us to see the scene. It must have XYZ information on a point in space.
If I push in on something using a mouse scroll wheel from the User Perspective view, is it translating that view?
It seems that I can reproduce the problem I was having if I:
align the User Perspective view with the camera (Blender Hotkey: numpad 0; Industry Standard Hotkey: F4). View lock is OFF at this point.
Move closer to the subject along the camera’s line of sight using the mouse scroll wheel.
Turn on View Lock > Camera to view. Once View Lock is on, it assumes the User Perspective view is still looking through the camera, even though technically it’s not. The user perspective view has been translated closer to the subject along the camera’s line of sight.
I also find that if I turn View Lock on when the User Perspective view is not aligned with the line of sight of the camera, it doesn’t seem to affect the camera. It doesn’t seem to be a parent relationship.
