Camera shelf tool

Adds a camera to the scene. You can Ctrl-click the shelf tool to create a camera from the current view.

Placing cameras in the viewer ¶

There are three ways you can place cameras in the scene view. They can be moved once they are placed by either dragging them in the scene view or changing the values in the parameter editor.

To...	Do this
Place cameras in a specific location in the scene view	Click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab. Move the cursor into the scene view. You can hold `Alt` to detach the shape from the construction plane. Click to place the camera anywhere in the scene view.
Place cameras at the origin	Click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab. Move your cursor into the scene view and press `Enter` to place the shape at the origin.
Place a camera by looking through it	`⌃ Ctrl` click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab. Use the handles or edit the values in the parameter editor to move the camera to the desired location in the scene view. When looking through the camera there are handles on the sides of the scene view which allows you to orient and crop.

To...

Do this

Place cameras in a specific location in the scene view

Click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab.
Move the cursor into the scene view.

You can hold Alt to detach the shape from the construction plane.
Click to place the camera anywhere in the scene view.

Place cameras at the origin

Click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab.
Move your cursor into the scene view and press Enter to place the shape at the origin.

Place a camera by looking through it

⌃ Ctrl click the desired camera from the Lights and Cameras tab.
Use the handles or edit the values in the parameter editor to move the camera to the desired location in the scene view.

When looking through the camera there are handles on the sides of the scene view which allows you to orient and crop.

Handles ¶

Clicking RMB on cameras in the scene view gives you more camera and light manipulator handle options. The two that are unique to cameras are the focus handle and the frustum handle.

Frustum handle

Allows you to set the near and far clipping planes and the focal length.

Focus handle

Allows you to control the depth map focus.

Use the view keys to move a camera ¶

Look through a camera as described above. You can also choose a camera to look through once it is created by choosing it in the camera menu.
Lock the camera to the view by clicking the Lock camera/light to the view button, which is located on the toolbar on the right side of the view. You can also lock the camera to view by by turning on Tie Camera (or Light) to View in the camera menu.
Use the tumble, track, and dolly keys to move the camera.
Unlock the camera to place it.

Make a camera look at an object (Solaris) ¶

Create an object.
Create a Camera LOP.
Open the camera’s Transform ▸ Constraints section and turn on Eanble Look At.
From the Scene Graph Tree, drag the look-at-object onto the Look At Primitive field to establish a connection.

Make a camera look at an object (SOPs) ¶

Create an object.
Create a camera.
Click Look At on the Modify shelf tab.
Select the object to look at and press Enter.

You can also make a camera look at an object by turning on Enable Constraints on the Transform tab of the parameter editor. There, click the button and choose Look-at from the menu.

For an example scene, open the internal help card for the Constraint Lookat CHOP, e.g. by adding the node and right-clicking it. From the context menu, choose Help. At the help page’s bottom you can find a LookAtTargetAndOffset example file. Click Launch to load the file directly to a new instance of Houdini. The proposed workflow is also valid for cameras.

Camera shelf tool

Placing cameras in the viewer ¶

Handles ¶

Use the view keys to move a camera ¶

Make a camera look at an object (Solaris) ¶

Make a camera look at an object (SOPs) ¶

Shelf tools

Using the shelf ¶

Technical ¶