Using camera in Animate

Camera in Animate allows animators to simulate a real-life camera.  Previously, animators relied on third-party extensions of varying quality and compatibility, or modified their animations to mimic a camera’s movement. Animators can use the following features that are integral to any motion film.

• Panning with the subject of the frame
• Zooming in the object of interest for dramatic effect
• Zooming out of a frame to remind the viewer of a larger picture
• Modifying the focal point to shift the attention of the viewer from one subject to another
• Rotating the camera
• Using color tint or filters to apply color effects on a scene 

When you set a camera view for your composition, you look at the layers as though you were looking through that camera. You can also add tweens or keyframes on a camera layer.

Camera tool is available for all the built-in doc-types in Animate - HTML Canvas, WebGL, and Actionscript.

Use any of the following options to enable the camera tool:

• Click the camera icon from the tools panel.
• Click the Add/Remove camera button from the timeline.

When a camera is enabled, a stage boundary is displayed in the same color as the camera layer.

The stage now behaves as a camera for the document. A new camera layer with the camera object is added to the Timeline panel. When you select the camera tool, the camera icon is enabled in the Property inspector.

When the camera is enabled:

• The current document is placed in the camera mode.
• The stage is turned into a camera.
• Camera border is visible in the stage boundary.
• Camera layer is selected.  

Zooming, rotating, or panning the camera

Zooming the camera

Rotating the camera

Panning the camera

Using camera panning controls

To pan objects in horizontal direction, move the mouse over x coordinate value and drag the slider to right or left. 

To pan objects in vertical direction, move the mouse over y coordinate value and drag the slider to right or left.

Reset options for camera effects

You can reset the changes that you make with camera for pan, zoom, rotation, and color effects whenever you want to go back to original settings. To retain your previous property values, click the reset icon next to each of the properties.

Applying tint on a camera layer

Adjusting color filters on a camera layer

Creating parallax effect with camera and layer depth

As a game designer or developer, you want to create an immersive experience for a game. By using different objects of a game in the foreground and background layers, you can control the speed and position of these objects. By keeping the camera focused at a constant focal point, you can move the objects at different speeds to create a three-dimensional effect. In Animate, while creating your 2D animations you can achieve this effect by using camera and the layer depth feature. You can create parallax effect for objects by changing depths of layers using the Layer Depth panel. To use layer depth, click Window > Layer Depth.

Click here for more information on layer depth. 

You can view the depth and perspective of objects with this effect.

• The objects that are closer to the camera move faster than the objects that are far-away from the camera.
• When camera layer is at 0 value, the objects closer to the camera possess lower positive number. And, the objects far-away from the camera possess high positive number. The layers that are behind the camera possess negative numbers. 

Video depicting parallax effect and camera z-depth

Locking a layer with camera

As an animator or a game designer, you want to make some objects of the animation to stick to the view of the camera. For example, an action button, a heads up display in a game displaying the time meter, or a gun. In such cases, you have to keep the asset locked with the camera movement. The Attach To Camera feature in Animate enables you to achieve this effect.

When you attach a layer to the camera, objects in that layer are pinned to the camera and always move along with the camera. So, they appear to be unaffected by camera movements in the output.

You can attach a single layer to camera by clicking the dot in the attach camera icon's column. If the layer is attached to camera, a representative icon appears next to that layer name.  

The following illustrations depict the layer behavior before and after attaching it to the camera: 

Illustration depicting an animation when layer is not attached to camera:

Illustration depicting an animation when layer is attached to the camera: 

You can also attach or detach all the layers from the camera by clicking the attach camera icon in the timeline. 

Using camera at runtime

You can introduce, access, or manage the camera at runtime using the camera APIs for AS3, WebGL, and HTML canvas document types. The list of camera runtime APIs for AS3, WebGL, and HTML canvas document types are as follows:

 All the methods are applicable for AS3 document type. Some of the methods are not available for WebGL and HTML canvas types. The methods that are applicable/not applicable for WebGL and HTML canvas are indicated in the last two columns of the table.

Virtual camera methods

Access camera as a movie clip object

Masking objects at runtime (for AS3 document)

You can mask the objects at runtime using the following camera API code:

import fl.VirtualCamera;
fl.VirtualCamera.getCamera(root).setCameraMask(torch);

A sample screenshot from animation, when you use a oval shaped mask, is displayed as follows:

Creating interactive camera animations with actions code wizard

A step-by-step approach to creating animation using interactive camera is depicted in the following flow diagram. You can use actions code wizard in HTML canvas document. 

You can find a sample video below, which demonstrates the usage of interactive camera. You can observe how you can vary the focus at runtime on parachute, jet pack, and the urban landscape at various intervals.

Video demonstrating the usage of camera at runtime

Cropping the object on stage

Adobe XD allows you to stack or overlay content on top of another artboard to simulate interactive slide effects. For example, drop-down lists, slide-up keyboards, or lightbox effects. With overlays, you can also reuse an artboard multiple times without duplicating the overlay content for each artboard. 

To crop the content flowing outside the stage, click Clip the Content Outside Stage button . With the camera and stage view, you can view the content within the camera bounds.