Camera placement - 3ds Max Tutorial

- [Instructor] Now, lets go a little bit deeper into cameras and camera placement. Now, where you place the camera, and what that camera focuses on will do a lot to further the story that you're telling about your project or your building. The camera can show or highlight different elements of the scene. And it also will guide you through the story that you're trying to tell. Now, this particular camera is just doing what we would call an establishing shot. So in this shot, we're basically giving you an overview of the building, it's kind of a just a generic shot to show you the volumes of the building, as well as how everything is laid out into the landscape. Now we could certainly have other shots that give you a little bit more interest. So if I go into camera main O1 we could do, for example, exterior O1, and this is a similar shot, but it's at an angle and now we're including things such as these trees. Which gives you more of a sense of how the building sits into the landscape. Now, this particular shot is an eye-level shot. And in itself, it's interesting but if we want to we can move the camera up and down to change the focus of the scene. So if I go into say camera exterior O2, this is a low level, almost a ground-level shot. And this gives you kind of an up view of the building makes the building maybe look a little bit more heroic, and it definitely gives you a much better sense of the angularity of that roofline. Now if we go in the opposite direction, let's go-to camera exterior O3. Now, this camera is above the roofline. So we're looking down it's a little bit more of what we would call a god shot. But this camera is giving us a sense as to how the landscaping is laid out and how the patios and the pond is laid out. Now, if we want we could go even higher. So if I go into cameras more, and select camera overview, we can do a shot like this, which is actually a little bit more technical, but it does convey a lot of information about the roofline and the footprint of the building. Now we can also use the same techniques on interior shots. So if I go to Cam_InteriorO1, you'll see that we have basically an establishing shot of the kitchen and dining room. Now, this shot is pretty far back so we don't have anything of interest close to the camera. And a lot of times bringing things close to the camera allows you to get a better sense of depth in the scene. So if we go to say camera interior O2 this is a little bit closer to the dining room table we get a sense of where that is. It fills up a little bit larger volume in the scene but we also have in the distance our kitchen. Now if we wanted to highlight the kitchen, we could certainly do that camera interior O3. And this pushes the camera in and also changes the camera angle. So we have a little bit more orthographic or squared kind of view of the scene. And this gives you again, a slightly more technical view of the kitchen, but it gives you the information that you need. Now we can do other sorts of shots that give you details of the scenes. So if I have a say camera detail O1, this gives you kind of a detail of that pond and the front patio. And again, the lines of these kind of leads you towards that wood wall, which again highlights that detail. If I go into say camera detail O2, and this is a detail of this corner of the building and these windows really do reveal the interior and they're definitely a significant part of this structure. And then we can go even further with our details. To create things that are more compositional, so for example, detail O3 is really just detail of the materials that are used for say, the carpet, and the chair and when we would render this, this will give you kind of a sense of the materials used in the building. So as you can see, we have a wide variety of ways to place your camera. And again, when you place your camera, always try to keep in mind the story that you're trying to tell.