Lock camera movement

[Frederick]

is there a way to lock the camera so it can’t be moved by accident?
I seem to be always moving the camera inadvertently in the choreography window. I can’t seem to see a way to prevent accidental movement when( I move around the camera window as I would in a front or side view, the camera as well. 
very annoying. 

[Tom]

check out the graphic.

[Frederick]

Yes, that works for most things, but when I inadvertently orbit when in camera view in a choreography window, it is treated like a camera move. There is no undo for that either. 
My best solution so far is to constrain the camera location and rotation to a null and invoke that constraint to get the camera back to where I had (painstakingly) set it up. I wish there was a property that would make camera movement, or any other object’s  movement impossible, in order to protect a previous placement. 
I know it’s my mistake to move the camera, but it’s so darn easy to do!

[robcat2075]

1 hour ago, Frederick said:

Yes, that works for most things, but when I inadvertently orbit when in camera view in a choreography window, it is treated like a camera move. There is no undo for that either.

I had forgotten that even exists.

AFAIK, you have to press the middle mouse button with SHIFT and/or CTRL to do this. Are these what you mean?

But I am able to CTRL-z my way out of those maneuvers.  You can't?

[Frederick]

Yes, that’s what I mean, and CTRL Z does nothing..

[Frederick]

Robcat, I tested CTRL Z on my desktop rather than my laptop, and it does work there. It just takes a few clicks before anything happens. 
thank you. 
 

[robcat2075]

10 hours ago, Frederick said:

Robcat, I tested CTRL Z on my desktop rather than my laptop, and it does work there. It just takes a few clicks before anything happens. 
thank you. 
 

Huh. That's weird. But CTRL-Z works on that laptop in other apps?

 

My back up idea was to create a second Chor in your PRJ and use it to archive Camera positions.

-Set the Translation, Rotation, ETC, and Key Model filters ON

-select the Camera in your first Chor and do Edit>Copy Keyframe (or CTRL-C if that works on your laptop)

-select the Camera in your second Chor and do Edit>Paste Keyframe

 

If you ruin a camera position in the first Chor you can copy and paste it back from the second Chor.

 

 

[Frederick]

Cool. 
I’ll try that. 
I also created a text file with the needed coordinates and saved that. 
I never save a project anymore. 
more than once or twice the project file would not open. Good thing I didn’t embed the component files. 
But that’s another topic!

[robcat2075]

You can also do this copy/paste between the camera and a Null in the same Chor, although that won't save camera parameters like focal length.

[Rodney]

Something you can do as well is select the Camera and then Right Click > Duplicate to create a copy of the camera that stores the settings of the current camera.

Then it's easy to return to that later as needed.

I like to do that when I have the camera almost in a perfect position or with ideal settings but feel the need to experiment.

Better to just create a new Camera with current settings and press on with that new Camera.

Then if those changes don't work out... just delete the camera.

 

A bit off topic...

We can also save the Camera as a .cam (Camera) file but that doesn't particular help with animated cameras.

There are some other options that can help in those cases such as creating an empty Model to house an Action and then add a Camera to that Action.

Then that Camera is an Action Object inside of that Action which can be drag/dropped into Choreographies and even onto other Models.

 

Edit:  Steffen also added the View Undo/Redo feature several years back that can be quite useful.