Camera Tips

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.

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

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