You can switch in and out of of camera view by pressing Numpad 0. In camera view you see three concentric rectangles - the MIDDLE rectangle shows what will appear in the render.

Pointing the camera

The easy way to point the camera is this:

1. Select (right-click) the camera that you want to move.

2. Move your eye until it has the view that you want the selected camera to have.

3. Press Ctrl-Alt-Numpad 0

4. Press Numpad 0 to obtain the camera view

5. Save your work (always save your work before you do a Blender render!)

6. Press F12 to do a render - you may find that your field of view is not wide enough in which case you will need to move the camera further away from the objects it is pointing at. A good way to do that would be to switch out of camera view, select the camera, make sure the transform orientation is set to 'normal' then use the 3D translation manipulator.

7. Press F11 to close the Render window.

8. If the English labels have become illegible try shrinking and then expanding the Blender window - this should usually fix the label problem.

Making the camera track an object

If you have made an animation you may well want the camera to automatically turn so that it is always pointing at the moving object. We will make the camera track an object by using the ‘Track To’ constraint.

In Object mode, select the camera (right-click it) then open the ‘Object Constraints’ panel . Choose ‘Add constraint’ then ‘Track to’. Type the name of the object that the camera should track, such as ‘Cube’. The camera looks along its -Z axis so choose this for the ‘To’ option. The top of the camera is in the Y direction in its local coordinates so set ‘Up’ to Y. These directions may be easier to understand if you switch the 3D manipulator on and set it to display local axes. Don’t forget to switch back to Global axes after you have seen the camera’s local axes.

Don’t forget that you can press Alt-A to run your animation or to pause it.