Camera

The camera is a single, built-in layer you pan, zoom and tilt to frame a scene, with layers at different depths parallaxing against each other as it moves.

Every project has exactly one camera. It is created automatically and cannot be duplicated or deleted: Add Layer has no Camera entry, because there is nothing to add.

Moving and zooming it#

Select the camera and switch to the Camera tool. Drag inside the canvas to pan freely, or drag onto one of the two axis arrows (red for X, green for Y) to constrain the move to that axis. A small dead zone right at the camera's centre is reserved for a free pan.

Camera zoom is a property of the camera itself (Properties ▸ Zoom, 0.1 to 10, default 1), a different thing from the viewport's own zoom, which only changes how big your working view looks and is never part of the render. It is keyframeable, with its own timeline track, its own graph curve and its own auto-key channel, so a push in is animated on the camera rather than faked by scaling the artwork.

Camera View#

The mode-toggle group in the viewport's top bar has an FX cell, a Camera View cell and a 3D cell. Turn on Camera View to look through the camera exactly as it will render (the canvas letterboxed inside a darkened, gold-bordered frame) with panning, zooming and orbiting all locked, because this is exactly what the final output shows.

Point of interest#

Point of Interest, in the camera-only rows of Properties (or in the Camera tool's own options bar), switches the camera between two behaviours. Off, it is a free camera aimed by its own pitch and yaw. On, it tracks a placeable, keyframeable target point, so following a moving character just means keying the point of interest instead of the camera's own rotation.

Depth of field#

Depth of Field (0 to 100, default 0) blurs 3D-enabled layers according to how far they sit from the point of interest's own depth: a layer level with it stays sharp, and the further another layer sits from it the softer that layer gets. It only affects layers that have their own 3D switch turned on, and it only takes effect when you are actually looking through the lens, in Camera View or in an export.

Depth of Field is keyframeable, and its sub-track sits once inside the camera's Transform group alongside Zoom, Point of Interest, Rotation X (tilt) and Rotation Y (pan). All four take Add Keyframe from their row's right-click menu, and all four answer the Show Sub-tracks filter like any other channel.

Multiplane depth#

Multiplane parallax needs two things on together: the viewport's 3D toggle (see The 3D viewport) and Camera Depth above 0 (0 to 8, default 0) on the camera itself. With both on, layers set further back with Position's Z field slide less than nearer ones as the camera pans, the classic multiplane look. With the 3D toggle off, depth stays as inert, keyframeable data and nothing parallaxes.

The camera as a 3D object#

With the viewport's 3D toggle on, select the camera and it gets its own move gizmo. The Move and Transform tools move the eye and the point-of-interest node separately: grab the point of interest to re-aim without relocating the camera, or grab the eye to move the whole rig. The Camera tool instead moves the eye and the point of interest together, as one body. On a free camera, with Point of Interest off, the eye node also gets orientation rings for tilt and pan; with Point of Interest on, those two are hidden, since the aim point already decides where the camera looks.