After Effects

Cameras in After Effects

This tutorial will cover how to create and manipulate cameras in After Effects, as well as how to show multiples views. It does require a basic understanding of After Effects.

Getting Started Setting up a 3D scene

1. Create a new composition.

2. Create a new shape layer with a star and name it appropriately.

3. Make the layer a 3D Layer by right clicking the layer name and choosing 3D Layer, or by selecting the cube icon in the layer panel.

4. Duplicate the layer and change the color of the star in the second layer.

5. Select the rotate tool, click the green arrow and hold shift to rotate the star 90 degrees around the y-axis.

Duplicating star

The second star will only be visible as a line, like we're looking at the edge of a sheet of paper. Now we have a 3D object, so we can see the camera movement. Cameras and lights only work on 3D layers.

Adding Camera

1. Create a new camera by going to Layer > New > Camera.

2. Name your camera. The default settings should be fine.

Camera Tools

To the left of the rotation tool are the camera tools.

  • Unified Camera Tool - use left mouse button to orbit, middle to pan, and right to zoom
  • Orbit Camera Tool - click and drag to rotate around your scene
  • Track XY Camera Tool - click and drag to pan (truck side to side)
  • Track Z Camera Tool - click and drag to zoom (truck in and out)

Take a moment to play around with these tools to get comfortable with them (if you work in any 3D programs, this should feel familiar). You should be able to see the two intersecting stars. The following image shows a few different views of the same two star layers.

Camera rotating around star.

When you are finished, right click the layer and choose > Transform > Reset to reset the camera to its default position.

Multiple Views

After Effects allows you to see multiple views of your composition, which is extremely useful when working with cameras and 3D layers.

1. From the bottom of the composition view, change from 1 View to 2 Views (horizontal has them side by side, vertical stacks them).

Camera views

Camera views.

The yellow triangle corners indicate the active view (in the image above, the left view is active). This means that the settings in the menu bar at the bottom apply to this view. For example, if we chose to turn on the action and title safe guides, they will only show in the composition on the left.

2. Top is generally the most useful because it shows the depth (z-axis) that we can't see from the front view, but we could change it to another angle. Click "Top" in the menu bar at the bottom (NOT in the upper left corner), and choose a different view.

Tutorial Image

What is the Pink Triangle?

The pink triangle (it's actually a pyramid shape) represents your camera, and what it can see. For example, I've rotated the camera so it is looking at the stars more from the right, rather than straight on.

Active Cameras

Other Good Things to Know

  • Again, cameras only work with 3D layers. 2D layers will remain flat and not show any perspective, movement or depth.
  • You can have multiple cameras in a composition, set up at different angles. HOWEVER, After Effects will only render the top-most camera in the layer stack. This is the active camera.
  • You can look through other cameras using the same drop-down menu we used to switch from Top to Right.
  • Like pretty much everything in After Effects, camera transformations and properties can be animated.