Many people are intimidated by working with the camera in AE. In part one of this tutorial, I've attempted to simplify the camera a bit.

Adding a camera can really enhance your composition by "bringing it life"- giving it depth and movement, without necessarily having to add motion to all of your layers independently. In this project, I've assembled a landscape in Photoshop and distributed it to layers. When bringing my composition into AE, I've arranged layers 1-4 (1 being the closest to the viewer, 4 farthest away). The composition "work comp" contains all the as they were imported from my Photoshop comp. "Mountains" is my finished attempt with a camera move. In this tutorial I'll explore how to arrange the layers and add a simple camera move to your composition. In the next tutorial I'll go into more detail about camera motion, adding depth of field, and other ideas to add life to static images.

You will need:

• AE 7 Professional

Instructions

Add a camera to your "work comp" composition by selecting layer-new-camera. For now, let's stick to the standard default, without depth of field.

Note that nothing has changed- this is because your layers need to be 3D layers, and moved on the z-axis, in order for them to interact with the camera. Select all your layers (except your sky layer, which will be a background), and make sure your 3D layers option is on.

Notice that in your transform twirl-down under your layer, there is a new, third position number. This third number refers to the z-axis, the position of depth in space. If you click and drag (scrub) this number, you can see that the layer is now moving in relation to the camera, and that you can now position layers on top of or behind one another regardless of their hierarchy in your timeline (for instance, you can now place layer four in front of one if you like, since now you have the option of moving them on the z-axis, unlike 2D layers, which are arranged according to how they are stacked in your timeline.) Since the sky is a background, it is not necessary to make it a 3D layer. It can be kept as a 2D layer, and If it is arranged underneath the rest of the 3D layers, it will appear as your background. There are now also three arrows on your layer. The blue arrow is your new z-axis, the red, x (horizontal) axis, and green y (vertical) axis.

For the sake of simplicity, I arranged my layers in 3D space according to their number/as they are arranged on the timeline. The higher the number on the z-axis, the farther away the layer appears, and negative numbers will move the layer toward and behind the viewer/camera. I positioned layer one- the cactus, closest to the camera, at a z depth of Z=160 and Z=72, layer 2 at Z=710, layer 3 at Z=2000, and layer 4 at Z=4000. I placed the raven at Z=1912, between the two mountain ranges.

This will give plenty of separation between my layers. The more separation you have between layers, the more effective your depth of field will be, as well as enhancing the perception of distance to the eye when moving your camera. Note that you may need to scale your layers up a bit as you move them back, depending on what you're trying to achieve and how large your layers are. Often you can scale images that are the farthest back well over 100% and not have the image quality affected, unlike working with 2D layers.

It also may be helpful to look at your composition from the top view to see where your layers are in relation to each other and the camera. In your view window, there is a tab labeled "active camera" - this means that you are looking at your composition through your camera that you added-camera 1. If you twirl this down, you will see different options. Select the top view to see your composition from the top. You may have to zoom out a bit to get everything in. This shows you the top view of your layers, and the distance between them. You can click and drag on the arrows to arrange them in space this way as well. I like to think of it as creating a big diorama- those layered landscapes I did in middle school science classes!

Once you have your layers positioned where you like, you can then move your camera through the space. The two main options you'll be adjusting are camera position and point of interest. You can adjust these by clicking and dragging in the top view if you'd like, or as you see it through the camera view. It may be helpful to set up two or more simultaneous camera views. For instance, you can set up a top view and an active camera view, to help see what the camera is actually doing. This option is next to the comp view twirl down. You can have up to four simultaneous views. I selected 2 views/horizontal, with one as an active camera view, the other from a top view, so I can see the positioning of my layers.

Camera position is the position of the actual camera, point of interest is rotation and the trajectory- what the camera is "pointed" at. Zoom works like a standard camera zoom. AE also has an orbit camera tool that can help you adjust the positioning and rotation of the camera. This is located in the tools palette.

When you click and drag the orbit camera tool, your camera layer will add keyframes to rotate the camera in a particular direction. For this tutorial, I moved the camera horizontally and down the z-axis, and did not add much rotation to the camera as my layers were perpendicular to the camera.

If at any time you are moving the camera and your layers disappear or you get disoriented, the point of interest is usually the culprit. Check your top view, and make sure the camera is pointing toward your layers, and not too far off course.

As a final touch, I turned on the motion blur for all 3D layers and used the depth of field option on under "camera options." This isn't necessary, but can be useful if you want your composition to have the look and feel of a more realistic camera in 3D space. Use of depth of field and motion blur also increases preview and render times significantly. I'll explore depth of field and camera blur in the next tutorial...