Here's a short tutorial on how to work in 3D space in motion and use the depth of field
function.
What I've got here is something which looks kind of reminiscent of 1970s open university
diagrams.
It's kind of creepy, but it'll do for this tutorial.
What I'm going to do is these are all just laid out, just flat shapes in a group and
I'm going to add in a camera from the new camera button.
It says cameras only affect 3D groups, do you want to switch your 2D groups to 3D?
And the answer is yes I do, so I'm going to hit the switch to 3D button.
Once I do that it doesn't look like much has changed, but in the top right and left panels
I have controls which allow me to adjust my camera settings.
And if I go to the view panel I can also turn on my compass which I rather like and also
my 3D grid and oh let's just turn all of them on, inset view, which is quite important
and 3D scene icons.
So what I'm going to do is I am going to position each of these items either closer
or further away from the camera which is along the Z axis for depth, those of you who like
your maths.
So first of all I'm going to go into perspective mode by clicking on the little perspective
box and it just pulls my view outside of the camera.
I can then use these controls up in the top right to adjust where I'm looking and I just
want to rotate around just so that I can see my camera, let's just click and hold and drag
up to pull out.
So there we are, I can see my camera, I can see this lovely blue line which is my Z axis.
Now I can see each of my shapes.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to grab each one of my shapes and let's use that one.
If I use the little blue arrow that sticks out a bit I can adjust their position along
the Z axis.
You notice that because I turned inset view on under my view controls I can see what the
camera is actually seeing in that little box down at the bottom.
So I'm going to just drag some of these shapes either further or closer away to the camera
just along the Z axis and notice of course naturally if they get closer or further away
they get larger or smaller, that'll do, I'm going to leave the text one as it is.
I'm just going to go back into my camera, control and C or I can choose camera from
the list at the top as well.
I'm just going to reposition these just to make the composition a little bit nicer now.
So maybe I want that there, maybe I want that square there, and that there, and that there.
So I'm just going to drag maybe now all of them just down a little bit.
So with depth of field normally with through a camera things are either in focus or out
to focus depending on the distance they are to the camera.
At the moment everything is in focus which isn't exactly all that realistic.
So I'm going to turn depth of field on.
First of all I need to hit the render menu at the top of the canvas and choose depth
of field and instantly it's made some changes.
Just turn it off and on again, command control option and D turns it on or off.
And maybe I just want to exaggerate that or change the focus so I can shift the focus.
So if I select my camera from the layers, let's pop those away, I can look under the
camera properties and in fact inspect a camera and choose depth of field and there are controls
here for the depth of field blur amount and near and far focus and the focus offset.
So for example if I choose focus offset I can shift which things are in or out to focus.
Make sure you don't do this too much or otherwise it will probably make you go cross-eyed.
And I can also increase the amount of blur or not and of course all of these are key
frameable.
So for example I can move forward and honk record mode on having set a key frame initially
and I can adjust the focus offset maybe just on so that my text is in focus and if I go
back to the beginning now that focus will shift and that is how you work with 3D depth
of field in motion.
