Camera Lock

[jhmart1]

I think a small but wonderful feature would be the ability to lock the camera coordinates. I use an Apple Magic Mouse, and I am constantly zooming the view without realizing it. This often causes a lot of wasted time having to go back and undo all of the changes I made since I accidentally "zoomed"--especially if there are a lot of populations over a large area or slow-to-render atmospheric components and such. Just a simple "lock/unlock" button would be great. Just a thought... 

[N-drju]

Do you mean the render camera? If yes, it is perfectly possible to lock it. In order to do so, you need to go to the view you desire and use this button:



This way, whenever you move the camera, accidentally or not, you can always just select the adjacent button to the right and pick "Current Render Camera" from the drop-down list. Actually though, you should use this button in conjunction with extra cameras.

Most of the users, me included, add two or more cameras to navigate their scenes. This way, you can have one render camera which you never change (except for some minor tweaks) and several other cameras that you use to build and view your scene with.

[jhmart1]

Ah, I don't know why I never thought of that. Thanks! 

[N-drju]

You're welcome!

Just remember that when you actually wish to edit the render camera, you need to hit this button again so that the new view is "locked".

[WAS]

That just sets the 3D preview to that new location its at for render time. It doesnt lock the camera there. If he scrolls again he'll have to under or update view to new area he scrolled.

[N-drju]

It doesnt lock the camera there. If he scrolls again he'll have to under or update view to new area he scrolled.

Which is what I mentioned in the second post.

It doesn't "lock" the cam but all the settings are saved which is good enough for not loosing the render view.

[WAS]

Ah. I just don't think it really helps his case too much. He'll be doing the same thing he complained he was having to do. Undo.

A camera lock would indeed be very beneficial. For example, I have stopped using multiple cameras because Terragen can randomly loose camera focus, and while you're using a Roaming Camera, can suddenly have the main camera selected, and you can hit "Copy this view to render camera" for it to overwrite your scene camera. This happens to much for me and I don't even know how it suddenly thinks I'm using the main camera when I'm in, and roaming with the roaming camera. But I go to render, and suddenly I'm rendering the roaming cameras view cause when I copied the roaming camera (to do test shots of things) it overwrote my main cam.

A camera lock would solve all these issues.

[N-drju]

I think it greatly comes down to one's workflow and what someone is used to or not. I never had any sad surprises when using the multi-cam method but it may be confusing for some users no doubt.

I'm not saying that the actual camera lock is a bad idea. Might be helpful actually.

There is, however, one bug regarding the multi-cam workflow that is particularly annoying. Sometimes, switching to the additional camera, causes said camera to shoot off to LEO despite it having never been left there in the first place. It seems to happen at random.

It's a minor bug really but it does steal some time anyway.

[WAS]

There is, however, one bug regarding the multi-cam workflow that is particularly annoying. Sometimes, switching to the additional camera, causes said camera to shoot off to LEO despite it having never been left there in the first place. It seems to happen at random.

That I have never seen, and I used to use a couple cameras, one for final render with a few renderers attached at different settings, and then a roaming camera I'd switch to to roam around. Just somehow focus would be lost, even though RTP/3D Preview was using it and when I would go to set a new view to roaming camera to render a preview of a shader, or pop or whatever, it'd just send that data to the render camera. So I'd finish examining what I was looking at, render a preview of the scene, to find I was just rendering the roaming camera and it's origin was overwritten.

[Dune]

Just CTRL+D your important render cam and set it apart somewhere as a 'locked/secure' cam. You can always hook in back to the render node.

[WAS]

Just CTRL+D your important render cam and set it apart somewhere as a 'locked/secure' cam. You can always hook in back to the render node.

That's a good safety net. Though I think locking input to the camera node would be a pretty good addition. Most software I've fiddled with had some sort of either disable input or lock view to camera feature.