3DS MAX – Cameras

In 3DS MAX there are 2 types of camera, Target and Free, both of which have their own uses listed below:

Target Camera –Revolves around a specific point, can be used as a fly around for props you’ve made to show all angles.

Free Camera – Can be used when you’re animating a single area with multiple objects, unlike the Target Camera this one only rotates around the position it is placed or moved to.

How to create a Camera:

To create either of these two Cameras you can either use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl +C or go to the Create Panel on the right side of the UI and then to the Cameras Section shown below:

Seeing through your Cameras:

Once you have placed your Camera but are unsure of the view it has you can go to the Perspective option in the top left of the Viewport and select you Camera as shown below:

Changing the Parameters of your Cameras:

After you have got everything in place you can change the tiny details of your camera ranging from the lens that it uses to its measurements, to do this you must have selected your Camera and went into the Modify Panel next to the Create Panel on the right of the UI show below in the Red Box:

After this you will be given this large section of options you can play around with:

For example after changing my Lens to 20mm this is what my Camera looks like:

Adding Depth of Field

To add Depth of Field onto your camera you must go to the parameters area mentioned before and look for an option called the Multipass Effect shown below, tick the box and make sure Depth of Field is the selected option from the drop down:

Also check to see if this box is also ticked:

After all of this, the final Render will look like this; I will show how to Render your Camera below the demonstration:

How to Render from your Camera:

Rendering from your Camera is simple, just make sure that you have your Camera view selected as mentioned earlier then press the Render button shown below:

Animating the camera with Key frames

To animate your camera you must have selected the camera and then press the Auto Key button in the bottom right of the UI shown below:

The use the Time Slider o the bottom of the UI to set how many frames you want it to move from point A to B in as shown below:

After this Rotate or move the camera to the destination you want it to end up.