Views & Cameras
You can set the Stage window to show 1 or 4 views selecting the menu item Views/1 View and Views/4 Views or quickly pressing the / key (slash). Furthermore you can click on the 1 View and 4 Views buttons on the Stage toolbar.

View Controls on the Toolbar

1 View

4 Views
Projections
Any view can display different projections as Top, Bottom, Front, Back, Left, Right, Work, Default and Sprites Movable Cameras (Composite, with the green icon on the left-bottom corner of the view). The Sprites Movable Cameras displays your animation shot by the Sprites Cameras you have defined on the Sprites window. All the other projections are static and you should use them to control and build your scene. To show/hide the view icons on the left-bottom corner, press the key ' (apostrophe) or select the menu item Views/Show View Icons. You can quickly set these views pressing the following keys:


Press key Projection Dimension
f Front 2D
k Back 2D
l Left 2D
r Right 2D
t Top 2D
b Bottom 2D
w Work 3D
d Default 3D
s Sprite Movable Cameras 3D



When working with 4 views you have to firstly click to select a view. The selected view will show a white border. Then you can press one of the keys listed here above and set the view you like. You can modify the current view.

Rotate
You can rotate the Work projection, the Default projections and the Sprites Movable Cameras projection only since they are 3D views.
• Hold down the Control key then two-fingers-swipe onto your trackpad to rotate the scene around the X and Y axes.
• Add the Shift key to rotate around the predominant axis only (X or Y).
• Hold down the Control+Option keys then two-fingers-swipe onto your trackpad to rotate the scene around the Z axis.
• Two-fingers-double-tab to reset the view to its default settings.
• If you don't use the trackpad, hold down the 1 key, click and drag the mouse on the view to rotate the eye point around the target point. Hold down the 1-Shift keys together (firstly 1 then the Shift), then click and drag the mouse to rotate the target point around the eye point.

Zoom Eye
• Two-fingers-swipe up/down onto your trackpad to zoom the view.
• Two-fingers-double-tab to reset the view to its default settings.
• If you don't use the trackpad, hold down the 2 key, click and drag the mouse on the view to zoom the projection in and out.
• You can also rotate the mouse wheel when the mouse pointer is over the view to zoom it in-out. This task moves the eye point along the axis eye-target closer or farther from the target point, while the target remains on the same position. The distance between the eye point and the target point cannot be less than zero. Therefore in some cases you should go closer or farther from your model moving both the eye and target points along the eye-target axis (see here below).

Zoom Eye and Target
• Hold down the 2-Shift keys together (firstly the 2 key then the Shift), click and drag the mouse to move both the eye and the target points along the axis eye-target. This way you translate both the eye and the target point along the eye-target axis, and the zoom effect is virtually infinite. Please note that in this case the position of the target changes so any next rotation of the view around the target point will change as well.

Translate
• Two-fingers-swipe up/down onto your trackpad holding down the Shift key to pan the view.
• Hold down the 3 key, click and drag the mouse. The eye point and the target point will be both translated.
Sprites Movable Cameras
A Sprite Movable Camera is a camera that you can animate as well as any other object on the Stage. You can use several sprite movable cameras such a way to display the animation from different and dynamic points of view. However you can shoot the scene from one camera only at the same time. Thus any cross fade effect between two cameras is not allowed. You can add cross fade effects in post production.

When you create a new animation it doesn't contain yet any Sprite Movable Camera, thus, even if the current view is Sprite Movable Cameras (look at the menu Views and at the left-bottom green icon on the Stage), Kinemac will shoot your model using the Default Static Camera (it's a kind of static backup-view you can even modify when the animation is not playing).

Select the menu item Objects/Camera or click on the Camera icon on the Stage window Toolbar to add a Sprite Movable Camera to your animation. You will see a new Camera green sprite on the Sprites window. Put your camera sprite always above the objects to shoot with that camera in the hierarchical Sprites list, as shown here below.

In the example shown above, Kinemac will display the object Cube using the Camera A when the playback time is between 0 and 100. Then from the frame 100 to the frame 200, since there are no Sprite Cameras defined, it will display the object Cube using the Default Static Camera. Then from the frame 200 to the frame 300 it will display the Cube using the Camera B. Last, from the frame 300 to the frame 400 it will display a scrolling text using the Camera C as in a overlaying view, over the cube. We set the Camera C as static, without key frames. This way, even if you move the Camera B around your Cube, you will always see the scrolling text as statically positioned on the screen, as in a separated layer.

Camera-Eye
Camera-Target
Animate a Sprite Camera
You can animate a sprite camera as well as you animate any other object on the Stage: assigning key frames to the camera parameters. Each camera has an eye point and a target point that you can see when the Camera sprite is selected on the Sprites hierarchical list. The eye point, defined by its x, y and z coordinates, is the point from which you are looking at the scene. The target point, defined by its x, y and z coordinates, is the point of your scene which will be represented at the center of the screen. Download this tutorial to learn how to animate a camera following the steps here below.
Press the / (slash) key to set the 4 Views mode, then press the ' key (apostrophe) to show the View Icons (front, top…) on the bottom-left corner of each view. The top-left view, with the green icon, is the Composite View and it displays the scene from the current sprite camera.
Hierarchical Sprite List • Go to the Sprites view.
• Press Command-Left-Arrow to move the time marker to the frame 0.
• Click and select the green sprite camera on the Sprites hierarchical list of the Sprites window.
• If you don't see the camera eye/target icons on the scene, two-fingers-swipe up/down to zoom in/out the view until you see those icons.

Inspector/Camera panel 		• Go to the Inspector/Camera panel.
• Click on the key frame button Eye to create a key frame for the eye point.
• Click on the key frame button Target to create a key frame for the target point.
You can quickly create these 6 key frames (eye and target) simply pressing Command-K.

• Once created the 6 key frames, you can modify the positions of the eye and the target points by dragging the eye and the target icons on the static 2D views (Front, Top, Left...). The Composite top-left (top-left view with a green view icon) view will display the change in real time.
• More than moving the eye point by dragging its icon on the Stage, you can change the current camera position using the trackpad:

• Two-Fingers-Swipe up/down to zoom the view.
• Control-Two-Fingers-Swipe up/down to rotate the eye around the taret point.
• Shift-Two-Fingers-Swipe to pan the view.

• You can still change the current camera eye and target positions by entering a value on the Inspector/Camera panel. On this panel you can also change the View Lens Angle, the View Roll and other parameters.

When the current frame is a key frame, Kinemac will display the key frame icon close to the eye or target icon on the Stage, indicating that you can safely change the eye/target positions. Unlike-wise, if the current frame is not a key frame and you modify the eye or target position, the change will affect the whole duration of the camera-sprite and not only that frame (open the Bezier window to see how).

• Move the time marker at the frame 100. You can easily snap to the 10-frames-grid holding down the Command key while dragging the Time Marker.

• Press Command-K to create the 6 key frames Eye x y z and Target x y z.

• Modify the positions of the eye and/or the target points.

• Now press the Command-Left-Arrow key to go to the frame zero and press the Space Bar to play the animation. You will see the scene shot by your moving camera. Later you can double click on the camera sprite (or with the sprite camera selected press Command-E) and edit the Bezier curves describing the movement of the eye and the target points with more accuracy. See how to add, edit and remove the keyframes on the Animations page.