Houdini 12 Rendering

Use the view keys to move a camera

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. Use the tumble, track, and dolly keys to move the camera.

  4. Unlock the camera to place it.

Note

If you do not lock the Camera before you tumble the camera you will exit the view and the camera will not move.

For more information on placing cameras see the Lights and Cameras shelf help. For specific parameter help see the Camera node help.

Overlay a gate or graphics on the camera view

  1. Create a geometry (SOP) network to generate the graphics. This can be used, for example, to display a slate over top of the view for flipbooking.

    This does not actually gate or gobo the camera/light, it only affects the viewer.

    Houdini scales the portion of the mask geometry between 0 and +1 X and Y to the viewport size to create the overlay.

  2. Create a camera and choose Edit Rendering Parameters from the gear drop-down menu.

  3. In the Edit Parameter Interface window, expand the Viewport Display folder, select the View Mask folder, and click the add arrow. This will add the View Mask tab to the parameter editor.

  4. In the camera node's parameter editor, click the View Mask tab.

  5. Set the Mask aspect to control the gating of the view.

  6. Set the Mask opacity.

  7. If you created overlay geometry, click the + button next to the Mask overlay SOP parameter and choose the node containing the overlay geometry.

  8. To see the overlay, look through the camera or light, and turn on Camera mask on the Guides and Markers tab of the display options window.

How to shake the camera

To make the camera appear to shake during a render, try these expressions in the camera’s Translate-Z parameter:

Shake on 2s

if($F%2, 1, -1) * easeout()

Shake on 4s

if( $F/2%2, if($F%2, 1, 0.5), if($F%2, -1, -0.5) ) * easeout()

For more information on placing cameras see the Lights and Cameras shelf help. For specific parameter help see the camera node help.