All images from Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide by Kelly L. Murdock.

This is the next in a new series of excerpts from the Thomson Course Technology book Poser 7 Revealed: The e frontier Official Guide. In the next few months, VFXWorld readers will develop the skills needed to create, render and animate scenes and projects using the amazing tools offered by Poser 7. We will offer step-by-step tutorials for each task, followed by projects that allow readers to apply each new skill.

What You'll Do
In this lesson, you learn which preset cameras are available and how to select them.

Cameras provide you a view of the scene and can be manipulated to show you the exact portion of the scene that you want to concentrate on. You can select preset cameras from the Display, Camera View menu, the Select Camera icon and the pop-up menu in the Camera Controls. You can also select a camera for the current view by right-clicking on the Document Window and selecting Camera View from the pop-up menu.

[Figure 1] Cameras are displayed as icons in the scene.

Cameras within the current scene are represented by a camera icon, but most are set to be invisible by default. To see the camera icons, simply enable the Visible option in the Properties palette. Figure 1 shows a camera icon in front of the default figure.

Using Camera Presets
The available preset camera views include the Main, Auxiliary, Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Front, Back, Face, Posing, Right Hand, Left Hand, Dolly and Shadow Light cameras. Each of these camera types has its own icon in the Camera Controls, as shown in Figure 2, which you can access by clicking the Select Camera icon or by clicking and dragging to the left or right. If the Display, Show Camera Names option is enabled, the camera name appears in the upper-left corner of the Document Window.

Using the Main and Auxiliary Cameras
The Main and Auxiliary cameras can be rotated about the center of the scene and are the main cameras that you'll probably want to use. These cameras are not affected by the movement of the figures in the scene. The Main and Auxiliary cameras work exactly the same, but the Auxiliary camera lets you maintain the Main camera's position while you investigate another view.

Using Orthographic Cameras
The Left, Right, Top, Bottom, Front and Back cameras are all orthographic cameras that are located at the end of each axis. Orthographic cameras are special views that show the scene as a 2D image without any perspective and all dimension measurements are correct. Figure 3 shows the scene using the Four Ports layout, which includes three orthographic views. Orthographic cameras also cannot be rotated, and the Trackball in the Camera Controls is disabled when any of these cameras are selected.