Blender Tutorial: Switching Cameras To Create Different Camera Angles In Animations

Different camera angles always make animations more interesting and usually look pretty cool at the same time. Making cameras switch in Blender is actually reasonably simple all you need to do is set up a marker and then bind the camera to that marker. 

Start off by adding your extra cameras to the screen, you can do this by pressing Shift + A and select camera from the list much like you would when you're adding other mesh objects to the screen. Once these cameras are set up position them around the scene so that they will capture each of the camera angles that you want. For the sake of testing to see if everything is working it may be a good idea to place the monkey head in the scene so that it can be seen by each camera. This way when you test your animation as each camera switches you will see a different section of the monkey.

Once each of your cameras are set up find the animation timeline at the bottom of the screen. This is what you will need to use to add the markers to the scene. 

To set up a marker select the frame that you want the camera to change on by either clicking on it on the timeline show above or by clicking on the box shown below and typing in your chosen frame number.

(Click on this box and then replace the numbers in the box with your chosen frame.)

Before you set any markers up it's always a good idea to set a marker on the first frame of your animation so that Blender knows which camera your animation starts with. Set your frame number to 1 and then hover your mouse over the green line and press "M". This should add a little yellow triangle on frame 1 as shown below.

Now you have the marker set up right click to select the camera that you want the animation to start with. With your camera selected click on the view button in the bottom left hand corner of the screen and click on the "bind camera to markers" option. Alternatively you can hover your mouse over the animation timeline and press Ctrl + B to bind the camera. 

Once you've done this move to the frame that you want you're camera to change on by typing the number in the box shown previously. To add the second marker move your cursor down to the green line again and press M. This should add a second small triangle just like last time. 

Right click on the second triangle to make sure that it's the only one selected. If both of the markers are orange Blender will bind the camera to both markers and the camera won't change when you want it to. With the second marker selected right click on the second camera in your scene and like you did with the first camera click on the view button in the very bottom left corner of the screen and click on the option that says bind camera to markers. This will bind your second camera to the second marker. Now you've bound the two cameras to the markers it would be a good idea to test to make sure that its worked . Set your animation frame to 1 and then press 0. This should change your view to the camera that you bound to the first marker. Press alt a to play the animation and wait to see if the camera changes when it reaches the second marker it means everything is working as it should be. 

Repeat these steps for any other cameras you might want to include in your scene and add cameras to your hearts content.

Video tutorial here:

As always any feedback is always appreciated on these tutorials, also be sure to tweet me @markimo2 with any troubles or further questions.