Camera
A point of view saved in the project, with a physical lens, that can become the eye of the viewport and of the render.
A Camera is an object with no geometry that stores a point of view: position, rotation, the target the view orbits around and the lens. It is created with the Camera button, under Add Object, and starts out exactly at the framing the perspective viewport shows at that moment, with the same target.
In the viewport, the camera appears as a body with two film reels and the view frustum in front of it, in the aspect ratio of the rendered image. It can be selected by clicking on that drawing, and moved and rotated like any other object.
Active camera
In the hierarchy list, each camera has a button to look through it. With the camera active, the perspective viewport shows exactly what it sees, and navigating the view moves the camera along, like the editor camera: orbiting turns around its target, panning carries the target along and zooming gets closer to it. Position, rotation and target are stored in the camera, and each gesture can be undone like a regular edit. It also works the other way: changing the transform in the inspector or moving the camera in another view takes the point of view with it.
Only one camera is active at a time. Activating another one turns off the previous one, and turning off the active one takes the viewport back to where it was before, with the editor camera.
While a camera is active, selecting objects does not reframe the view, so the camera is not moved by accident.
When rendering
With an active camera, the render mode uses its framing and locks the view: clicking and dragging over the image moves nothing and does not interrupt the frame in progress. To orbit freely again, turn the camera off in the hierarchy.
The render depth of field comes from the active camera, through its focus and aperture options.
Properties
At the top of the inspector, a drawing of the lens shows the sensor, the rays crossing at the lens with the real angle and the distance to the focal plane, and right below it the same values with their names.
- Focal length and Sensor width: Together they set the field of view. A short lens on the same sensor widens the angle, a long lens narrows it and brings things closer. The sensor width is measured horizontally.
- Focus distance: Distance to the plane that stays sharp.
- Depth of field: Blurs what is outside the focal plane when rendering.
- F-stop: Lens aperture. Smaller numbers open it more and blur more.
- Aperture blades: Shape of the blur of points of light. 0 is round.