Camera
3D graphics is very similar to photography. A photographer has a camera and tries to capture screenshots of the environment. The 3D artist has a virtual camera and he is also responsible to "create" the environment (objects, backgrounds, lights...). The virtual camera can have the same features of a real camera if all the parameters are well emulated. Since it doesn't have the mechanical and optical limitations of real cameras it can have features that real cameras cannot.
The simplest camera is named "pinhole" and features an infinitely small aperture so everything is perfectly on focus.
This would be the ideal behaviour of cameras but since real cameras have finite apertures (as the human eye) that causes focal blur. Since 3D graphics tries to emulate real photographs, finite apertures was introduced in 3D to boost the realism. So a parameter of the camera, in software that allows focal blur effect, is the focal distance that is the distance from the camera where the objects are on focus. Objects nearer or farther from focal distance are blurred (the more the distance of the object differs from focal distance, the more the object is blurred).
Lens flares is another indesiderable problem that real cameras when direct light rays penetrate into the camera and gets refracted causing the well known effects. For years photographers and cameras manufacturers made their best to avoid or at least reduce this effect, but now 3D graphics has introduced it in his features to add even more realism to pictures.
Virtual camera must be positioned and set up to render...) an image. To position a camera properly is needed to set up his position in the space, his direction, and the directions of his sky vector that is the vector that points "up".
Another setting is the angle of aperture that can be wider than a real camera, up to 360 degrees to obtain a "panorama" view, that can be used to create a QuickTimeVR Movie.
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