Camera Control

Welcome back to the International Center for Studies in Creativity and Second Life. In this video tutorial we're going to cover controlling your camera. The camera features in Second Life. And of course this is aimed at enhancing your skill at this crucial feature of Second Life. Whether is it that you are an assistant to a class, is it a creativity training session, or is it a creative problem facilitation? All of these dynamics require that you focus your camera on different screens and objects, so you need to be proficient in being able to focus your camera at your perspective, your view, to be able to view the content appropriately. So there are basically three ways of controlling your camera. The most basic one is using your arrow keys the left and right so that basically what you're doing is that you're changing your avatar's position and with that, by default, it's changing your view. This is very simple. I would say it's not very effective, but it's a first step. You can couple that with using your scroller wheel, or the scroller in your trackpad if you're using a laptop. To change the level of scope: so if I go forward, now you see that things become closer, and if I go backwards, i get a more panoramic view with the angle... ...with the chosen angle. So if I would need to go back or to the default view, I just hit the escape button. So that's using the arrow keys and this scroller wheel. Now there's some more advanced techniques, there's a second technique that's a little bit more advanced, to control your camera and that involves using the alt key. So what you're going to do as the first step is you're going to choose something on which you want to focus your attention, and say I want to focus my attention or my view on this green chair. And then I hit the alt key and you see that my cursor turns into a magnifying glass. And then I'm going to left click under and you see how my angle changed. If I'm comfortable with the angle, what I will do is I can start playing with the scroller, just to see the object closer, or see things from a farther perspective from that angle. And if I wanna go back to the default view again it's escape. So let me review again that second technique. It's you put your cursor over the object that you want to focus your view, you press the alt key - do not release the alt key, you need to keep pressing it - and then we just do a click and you see how your view angle aligns where you have clicked. And then you can start working with your camera - or, sorry, your scroller - to bring things closer, or get a more panoramic view by scrolling away. The third technique for controlling your camera, and I would say the most effective one, and the one that you need to master in order to take full advantage of the Second Life environment is an advanced camera control, which involves using the alt key, the control key, left clicking, and your scroller. And I'm going to guide you through that process now. I'm going to go back a little bit with the scroller so I get a more panoramic view. So let's say I want to focus my camera on this screen that I have here. The first thing that I will do is I'm going to press the alt key, and then I'm going to - without releasing the alt key - I'm going to press the control, click the control key. With both keys pressed I'm going to do a left click on the center of the screen, and now, without releasing either the alt key, the control key, or the left click, I'm going to start moving, or panning, with my mouse side to side. So as I pan, you see how I am able to move my camera, and it's pivoting over the point where I just clicked. Once I achieve the desired angle, and as I can go up and down to play with a view or side to side. Once I'm comfortable with the view or the angle, I can release everything, that means release the left click, release the alt key and the control key, and then I can go and zoom in. And this gives me a better fit, a better angle. If I want to go back to the default view, I just hit the escape key, and that brings me back to the default view. Let me give you one more example with this third technique. Let's say we want to focus our camera on this big screen. So I will bring my cursor, I will press the alt key, press the control key without releasing them, i'm going to click on that. You see how the angle is set? You see how the pivoted set also? And then without releasing either the alt key, the control key, or the left click, I can start moving my mouse to find the right angle. Once I think I've got the angle that I want to view at, I can use the scroller on the track pad or on a mouse to bring the object closer or bring it, or have a more more panoramic view. And then what you can do as you start getting better with this skill, is starting more fine-tuning adjustments, to the point where let's say if I want to - we're going to use the screen in this session - and I want to make it fit exactly in my whole screen, I can bring it forward and start tweaking it, see, pivoting my camera until I get almost a perfect fit and I can almost see the screen as I was seeing this fullscreen. And again, if I want to go back to the default view it's the escape key. So I really encourage you to work with this, practice with these techniques. I would encourage you to practice with the technique of the alt key, the second thing that I described. But most of all I would encourage you to practice with the third technique, which involves using the alt key, the control key, and left clicking, and then once you achieve the desired angle, you use your scroller to zoom in and out. And this concludes the camera control tutorial, and stay tuned for more tutorials on Second Life.