'Lock Camera To View'... It was torture to find it!

Archive User Feedback
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Perhaps it is the easiest/simplest things to implement that go unnoticed sometimes!

Camera handling is extremely important! I am actually surprised that this is a long time unaddressed request.

There is plenty of space in the current UI to add simple camera handling buttons. The ‘Lock Camera To View’ should definitely be visible when Camera View (0) is selected.
Blender%20Camera%20View%20UI

There is also space for the most necessary Camera control handles:

  • Pan and Tilt
  • Track In and Track Out
  • Move Left, Right, Up or Down

Those should be enough for everyone to frame the camera exactly where it is needed in any given scene. Artists without a numpad or middle mouse button would also benefit from this.

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Hi, there are plans for something like this: https://developer.blender.org/T57234

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This is excellent!

There are good points made in that Task Discussion! Camera selector being one of them!

Having different buttons for Pan Up/Down, Pan Left/Right makes sense for technical reasons but the ability to pan in all directions when camera Lock is enabled should be kept as well. It is more intuitive when one frames a shot to pan in all directions until framing is satisfying.

I am so looking forward to this materializing!

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In case anyone is actually trying to find the “Lock Camera to View” mode check-box, as of Blender 2.82 it can be located via the following steps:

  1. Start from the 3D viewport and press N to bring out the right side-panel if it’s not already visible.
  2. There are some little tabs on the right edge of that panel, click the “View” tab.
  3. Expand the “View Lock” section if it’s not already expanded, and there is the “Lock Camera to View” check-box.

Yeah it is a bit hard to find for such a useful function.

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9

Thanks for that. I was actually searching for this very thing earlier today!

It is funny how the camera controls are still so hidden. It is one year after this discussion started and nothing seems to be improved on this subject. :neutral_face:

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It’s an ongoing mystery what the UI designers of Blender are actually working on.

Here is a similar thread on the subject (which should perhaps be merged into this one @MetinSeven):

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Currently the way you enable Lock Camera to View has a few flaws:

  1. Most importantly, lack of discoverability for new users ! Since the camera doesn’t move by default, new users will click on the camera icon and then not know how to move it. This is not good ! It will give newbies the impression that Blender is harder to use than it is.
  2. Requires 3 or 4 clicks (hit N to open the side panel, click to select “View”, click the “Lock Camera to View”, hit N again to close it) instead of 1.
  3. The N panel takes up a lot of space, so it’s annoying to have to keep opening it.
  4. Easy to forget you’ve enabled it. Every time I use Blender I find myself making unwanted camera movements and having to undo them!
  5. It’s a little bit poorly named, because it does move when it’s locked and it doesn’t move when it’s not locked! For me, this leads to a lot of accidentally checking the box when I want it to be unchecked, or vice versa.

The obvious solution is to get rid of the hidden Lock Camera to View checkbox and replace it with a little padlock icon somewhere outside of the camera frame in Camera View, which prevents the camera from moving.

image

This would be more intuitive, less clicky, and easier to see at a glance whether or not you’ve left it on.

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2.82 has very nice new “warning” icons for settings that you might have forgotten that you enabled in the modeling and sculpting workspace, specifically x-mirrors, vertex merging and dyntopo.

But unfortunately, this year old suggestion was overlooked for the layout workspace. I would like to add to this that the auto-key should have a similar prominent “warning” icon. Actually, ideally, the “lock camera to view” (and “auto key”) warning should look something like this:

image
image840×742 182 KB

:slight_smile:

But to keep more with the 2.82 theme, perhaps it should look something like this:

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image694×37 7.96 KB

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Sure. Merged those posts into this thread.

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Thanks for sharing my thread. This is a big pet peeve of mine and I really hope they change it soon.

As a workaround, I recommend saving “Lock Camera to View” to a Quick Favourites menu so you can quickly turn it on and off by hitting Q. It’s still pretty easy to forget when you’ve enabled it, though.

I wouldn’t hold it against the developers for not implementing it yet. On the whole, they’re incredibly good at responding to user feedback, especially compared to paid software.

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Yes, thanks! So many improvements, but muscle memory is still a challenge!

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Agreed. I seriously doubt I’d find this important feature if I didn’t know that it was in the previous versions of Blender. It was such a relief to find out it didn’t go missing. The “cryptic side menu” description helped a lot, thank you. :slight_smile:

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I don’t know what would be the best location for the option, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea that it will be easily accessible in Viewport where you could accidentally enable it.

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Yes you do.
This is related to the view, obviously it should be in the View menu, AND enabled by default.
Blender is the only app that does this weird “orbit-the-view-get-out-of-the-camera-view” thing.

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This is related to the view, obviously it should be in the View menu, AND enabled by default.
Blender is the only app that does this weird “orbit-the-view-get-out-of-the-camera-view” thing.

100% agreed!

I can’t even believe this is still a subject to debate about. There is no other reason to choose Camera View other than checking what the shot looks like and make adjustments if needed. What you described should be the default behavior.

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21

Miltos, youre making great points - Im doing 3D for 23 years now and Blender, even with the huge jump with R 2.8, it`s such a mess…

Initially, regarding the topic of this thread, I was slightly reminded of the Nuke “lock view to camera” or the tick box executing the same function in Houdini - only that it is on the same drop down you select the camera with. But hell! All the other things are all over the place in Blender.
The camera properties and the render settings AND the output settings are split into separate panes - while this is useful in general, it doesn`t totally make sense for specific functions that are fed by settings in other menus and areas of the software, like depth of field. Then you have a view menu on that roll out on the right plus another one on the left. Another thing that makes my blood boil is the stupidity of some hotkeys - the function that gets rid of the nonsensical, comically gigantic default “passepartout” around the cameras actual view is on the “home” button while youre using the blender standard keymap. Switching to industry compatible this feature in nowhere to find. So the obvious workaround is to switch between key maps to catch this function. And btw, in the left view menu, clicking the “view all” function actually performs what we know as “frame all” - while this command seemingly is assigned to the “home” button, too - WTF?!?!?

Really, the possibilities with Blender are amazing, but the UX is sooooo messed up…yuck…

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Miltos, I had the same negative experience with the hidden “Lock Camera to View” - checkbox as you when I started using Blender. And even when you know the button, its a lot of clicking back and forth. When I want to edit the camera, I have to do a click to select the camera and then another one to open the camera parameters tab. That is something I really don’t understand - why arent all relevant camera parameters not displayed automatically as soon as I select the camera? And why can't the camera parameters be displayed side by side with its transform parameters automatically? The same thing with lights - I want to change the strength of a light, I have to click once to select it and then once more to open the parameters tab of the light. Then I have to click once more to get to the transformation data of the light, which is in another tab. Why is this not synced? Why doesn`t the parameter window display the information in a more context-sensitive way?

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agree that ‘Lock Camera to View’ creates unnecessary cognitive load to understand whether it’ll keep the camera still (lock is generally associated with preventing movement), or move it around.

“Camera follows view”
renaming that way would avoid this problem.

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wow a year and a half later and it’s still an issue?
truly it’s the first time I actually care to google a solution to it,
the thing is if with twenty years experience editing photo video et all I can’t figure out how to lock down the camera , It’s not for me.I swear every time premiere or ae or whatever crashed or got stuck I’d revisit Blender and promptly go back to what I found intuitive and similar to other softs.
The only reason I can now give it some time is because like with google I really don’t want to feed shitty executives their coke habits, but like google its hard to extricate yourself from the ecosystem if you lack tools at the same level. I’m not going to deny I’ve thought about switching to coding every time a client complained about timeframes because adobe. but don’t got the brains for it, I tried following WWDC learn to code with swift game, two minutes later my eyes where so glossy I looked emballmed =) anyways, wake me up when the camera it’s easy or at least logical to use =)

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25

This shows a fundamental flaw I’ve been noticing for quite a while, which is a misuse of sidebar.

Sidebar is in general known to host 2 main types of panels: Tool settings, and user addons. It mostly hosts things that are related to modifying the scene displayed in the viewport, not modifying the viewport display mode itself. All the things that modify the display mode itself, such as background, grid, etc… ale located in a set of popovers here:
image

The confusion comes from the very random decision to have ALL but one sets of viewport settings in the popovers, and then have one specific set, which is related to viewport display present in the sidebar instead:
image

The view rollout contains the set of settings which are in the same category of as most of the settings in those popovers above. These settings do not modify the contents of scene, unlike pretty much everything else in the sidebar, they just modify how the scene gets displayed.

The solution to this is very simple:
Completely remove the view tab from the sidebar, and move its contents into another new popover button (which would have something like small camera icon) and place that button next to other popover buttons in the same category of how is the scene displayed.

Then, move 3D cursor section of the View panel in the tool panel.
(Please avoid nonsense comments such as “But the 3D cursor is not really related to tool settings”. If per workspace addons rollout, something which could not be further away from what the tool is supposed to be, yet it’s still present in the Tool section, then 3D cursor definitely qualifies too.)

Then Collections and Annotations remains. I don’t think that collections rollout should even exist in sidebar, but if so, then the whole tab should be renamed to collections with only it being there.

That leaves us with Annotations, which again belongs to the tool tab as that’s certainly a tool, a lot more of a tool than per workspace addons is.

The main point is simple, View section belongs in the popover to indicate relation to other viewport settings. It’s gravely misplaced in the sidebar.

It would be great if clean, new Blender installation without any addons enabled and without any scene object selected would result in a clean sidebar with only single tab (Tool) present (And with one more Item tab appearing once object is selected). That’d make sidebar more of a clean slate for user to place custom Blender tools on. It’d also make perception of sidebar purpose to be more clear. To indicate it’s a place for tool settings and custom tools rather than this kind of “kitchen sink” for everything random.

Benefits:

  • If a new user intends to lock view to camera, it’s easy to find by just seeing a popover button with Camera icon. Where else could it be?
  • If users want to unlock camera view or adjust FoV, they don’t need to shuffle around the sidebar from the tab they were using their tool in back to view tab to do just that one thing and then go back to using the tool.
  • All the other benefits listed above (More clear distinction between areas of settings to control how the scene is displayed and area of the tool settings for tools that actually modify the scene).
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