Getting Started
with VNS 3: Getting
Started
Part 1D. Cameras
1. Double-click the Island
Camera to open its Editor. Rename it Main and Enter.
By default, perspective cameras are Targeted, with the
target in the center of the terrain.
2. Activate the Island Planimetric
view and use the minus (-) key to zoom back a notch. The Main
camera icon is highlighted in yellow because that's the Component
we just activated by opening its Editor.
3. Go to the Main view
and click the Move View  button
on the titlebar. Click-and-drags in the view will move the camera.
Clicking outside the view turns off the function.
4. Left-click and drag left and
right to move along the x-axis and drag up and down to move along
the y-axis, toward and away from the target. You'll also see
the camera icon move in the planimetric view.
5. Right-click and drag up and
down to move along the z, or elevation, axis. With a targeted
camera, all movement is relative to the camera-to-target line
of sight.
6. Click the Rotate View  button on the titlebar. Left-click
drag left and right to change the heading and up and down to
vary the pitch.
7. Turn to the Main Camera Editor Position & Orientation page.
Watch the bank value change as you right-click drag left and
right to change the bank angle.
8. Select Default View Position
 on the titlebar
to return the active camera view to its default location.
9. Let's use another method to
position a camera to a new location. Alt+click the Main
camera in the Island Planimetric view to activate it. Ctrl+click
a new location a little west of where it is now. A Value Request box will pop up giving you the current terrain
elevation at that point.
10. Place the camera a few hundred
meters above the ground at 2075 meters.
11. Rotate the Main camera so
you get something like this. Save the project.
12. Render a preview. Information
about the preview is shown on the Diagnostic Data (Diag) page in the lower Scene-at-a-Glance pane.
If you can't see all 13 buffers or channels, click and drag the
divider bar above the pane upward.
13. Click around the rendered
scene and watch the Diagnostic Data
window; it's giving us values for each pixel in the render.
14. So far, we only have only
2 Components: Island Ground and Island Sky.
15. See the icon buttons along
the left side of the window? RGB/HSV is currently selected,
which is the usual color channel. We can also look at other buffers
or channels in the render like Normal XYZ, Illumination,
and Slope.
Normal XYZ buffer or channel
Illumination channel
Slope channel
16. Aside from seeing your renders
in a different light, so to speak, these buffers give you visual
terrain information. We won't be using them just yet, so click
back into RGB space.
17. Let's do something about
the default Ground Effect. Go to the Land Cover Task Mode
 and expand the
bold categories. We have an Environment, Ground Effect,
and 2 Image Objects.
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