Most people only ever drag the mouse around to line up a shot. HS2 Studio’s camera can do a lot more than that: it remembers angles, flies freely through a scene, adjusts its field of view, and can be locked onto a moving bone so it tracks a subject through an animation. For the full hotkey list alongside these, see Studio keyboard shortcuts.
Orbit, dolly, and snap to a subject
Drag in the viewport with the mouse to orbit the camera around its current pivot point. Scroll the wheel to dolly the camera in and out along its current view direction.
Select a character or item, then press F to snap the camera straight to it, framing whatever is selected without you having to orbit and pan into place by hand. If the camera has drifted far off into empty space, press A to snap it back near the scene, or press C to bring the current selection to the camera instead.
Save camera angles to the number keys
Once you have a shot lined up, hold Ctrl and press a number key from 0 to 9 to save the camera’s current position and angle to that slot. Press the same number key on its own, without Ctrl, to snap straight back to it.
This is the fastest way to jump between a handful of set angles while you block out a scene, or to get back to an establishing shot after moving away to adjust lighting or a pose.
Fly the camera freely
The arrow keys move the camera like a free-fly cam instead of only orbiting a fixed pivot, useful for working your way through a scene rather than repeatedly re-centering. The numpad doubles as a second set of the same controls.
Field of view and focal length
Studio’s camera panel includes a field of view slider. Lower it for a longer, more compressed telephoto look, where the subject flattens against the background, good for tight portrait framing. Raise it for a wider angle, which exaggerates perspective and depth and suits interiors or close dynamic shots.
Set the field of view before you fine-tune the camera’s position. Changing it afterward shifts how much of the frame the subject fills, so you will usually need to re-dolly once you’ve picked a focal length.
Follow a moving subject
For a shot that tracks a character through an animation, such as a walk cycle or a turn set up in Timeline, locking the camera to a bone beats trying to keyframe the camera by hand.
- Add a camera from the Add menu (Add > Camera). It appears in the Workspace tree.
- In the Workspace tree, drag the new camera onto the bone you want it to track, for example a head or chest bone for an over-the-shoulder shot, so the camera becomes a child of that node.
- Reset the camera’s local position and rotation to line it back up with the bone, then nudge the offset until the framing looks right.
Once parented this way, the camera inherits the bone’s motion frame by frame, so it holds the shot as the animation plays instead of drifting off target. For a follow that needs to survive changing poses without inheriting unwanted rotation, or for linking two independently moving objects together, use Node Constraints instead of plain parenting.
Cam Lights: a light that follows the camera
Character Maker automatically keeps a light aimed from the camera’s position so the face stays lit as you rotate around it. Studio doesn’t do this by default: lights you add sit fixed in the scene and stay put while you move the camera around them.
To get the same behavior in Studio, add a light, select it, then open the Graphics mod menu with F5 and turn on that light’s Cam Light option (sometimes labeled additional cam light). It pins the light to the camera so it tracks the camera’s position and angle instead of staying fixed, handy for handheld-feeling shots or for quickly lighting whatever you’re currently framing while you scout an angle. See Lighting with Graphics Mod for the rest of the F5 lighting menu.
Once you’ve got the shot framed and lit, you’re ready to lock in the pose or animation behind it. See Posing by hand: IK and FK for getting the subject itself right.