Now first off let us make sure the cameras are named as we go along because we are going to add three in for now just to make it easy to follow them. So, I am just going to double click on the camera to bring up the same dialog box, and here at the top list just type over that name and call it the “50 Millimeter” camera.
We come down to say “OKAY’, you can see that is now changed in the timeline. Let us use on new keyboard shortcut now for generating an extra camera, SHIFT+CTRL+ALT or SHIFT+COMMAND+OPTION on the Mac again and hit the C key to bring up the camera dialog box for a brand new camera. This time we will choose a different preset. Let us go for more of the motion picture timed 35 millimeter and we will change the name of this at the same time to save us coming back in.
Let us name that 35 millimeter camera, click OKAY again. We will now see that the angle has slightly changed on our scene because we have a brand new camera and it also sits on top of the other ones so it overrides it. This is currently now the active camera in the timeline. We will take a look at this in a little more detail later on but just in case you are wondering why that changed.
Now, again bring up the dialog box so we can add one more camera using another preset and let us go down to a very close macro zoom round about 15 millimeters and again let us just rename that, so it is easy to locate in the timeline. Click OKAY once again; we will notice another shift because 15 millimeter is the top camera.
Now, in order to understand what is happening with these cameras, let us change ourselves to a two-view composition over here. By coming down to where it says one view and let us go ahead and just choose two-view horizontal. The right-hand one which is currently selected, remember the outer yellow corners here, suggests that these views is highlighted, we will keep that as the active camera for now.
Let us switch across into the left-hand view for just one second and we will change this to the top view. Now if you look at the bottom of this, you can see a small pink rectangle here, this is in fact one of our cameras.
We come down to the timeline we just click here on the 15 millimeter. You can see that is exactly the one that we can see there on screen and immediately it shows up as a standard 3D object with the separate X, Y, and Z axis that you already familiar with. But we are also looking here at the focal area that this camera is presenting us on screen.
Now every camera by default, when you created inside of our After Effects, is set to focus on the dead center of the 3D world, remember that zero on the Z axis. The distance that the camera is back from that point is automatically chosen by the preset when we select it.
Now if we just hold down the spacebar and scroll down this window, you can see there is another rectangle a little bit further back. That in fact, if we select it, you can see in the timeline, is the 35 millimeter camera. Its focal area is a lot longer and therefore, it has been placed further away from that central point. And again, if we scroll way down here, we can see the final camera again if we select that, this is indeed the 50 millimeter camera.
Now if we had 200 millimeter camera you can obviously guess that this will be even further down here on the paste board. But these three offset give us a good idea of how After Effects is setting up default cameras when we apply them to our scene.
Now currently in the active view over here on the right hand side, we are looking through the 15 millimeter camera, remember? Because it is topmost in the timeline, therefore it is the active camera. Again, if we come back over here and select it on the left-hand view, the focal area here is exactly the width of the composition. And this is where the preset comes from.
If we come down and double click the camera in the timeline to bring up this dialog box and I am just going to change one setting here because again I might upset this slightly differently, you probably have pixels set as your measurements so I am just going to swi
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