Move Perspective View to a camera?

SethM

I often find myself wanting to do something that I have trouble explaining. Say I have a camera I'm going to render from, but I want to see the scene from closer in during a test render. I might do this to see exactly how some change is affecting a detail or (more often) because my working viewport is smaller than my final render, so I'm not seeing the same level of detail.

My problem is getting the camera to the right spot for the test render. I usually want to switch to the render camera and then move in, but I don't want the render camera to actually move (and I've accidentally moved my render camera often enough that I have to leave camera positions locked). So I go to Perspective View and try my best to approximate the location of the render cam.

Is there any way to move the Perspective View camera to a location (a camera or light, for example)? I know I can switch to a camera, make a duplicate of it, move that, do my test render, and then delete the temporary camera, but that seems like a mess. I can't select the Perspective View camera location to paste transforms into it.

Oh well. Just something small that annoys me.

murgatroyd314

Create > New Camera > Apply Active Viewport Transforms.

ShelLuser

@Murga: That's not what the OP is asking. His problems start after that. For example when you created a camera, then switched back to perspective view to work some more on your scenery after which you switch back to the camera and decide that you want to experiment from that same location. Problem: if you change anything you'll change the actual camera settings.

@Seth: This isn't perfect but usually works for me: open your scene pane, click on the camera (select it) and then right click on the view select option (the square with the plus in it, I forgot the official name). This will aim your view at the camera. Now rotate and you should be able to position the view behind the camera. Then left click the same option (view select or whatever it's called) and you should be positioned behind the camera, at a closer range. Zoom in and you're close to the camera position, but this time within perspective view.

 

SethM

Thank you both for the ideas.

@ShelLuser, I use the right- and left-click differences on the View Frame and View Aim button all the time; I'd never thought of using them to position parallel to a camera before. Thank you!

@Murgatroyd, I was thinking about your suggestions and realized that I can make a new camera (or duplicate a camera) in the place of the camera I want to move to, use that to get the view I need for my current purpose and then delete it, or even keep it around and paste the transformas of another camera to it as needed. I'll give that a try as well.

Thank you both!