Shutter has three main Stages:
This is done via the various modes shutter offers
The following is a video tutorial on basic path creation and manipulation:
Shutter provides camera roll and zoom, and creates nodes on the location of the users camera (including if you are in third person) To create the first node of your path, position your avatar so that your head is at the location you want the first node of your path to be, Adjust your roll, left and right with Numpad 4 and Numpad 6 by default. Zoom in and out with Numpad 8 and Numpad 2 by default. Once you are happy with the camera orientation, press Numpad 5 to create a node using those settings. Repeat this process for each node in the sequence of your camera path. Keep in mind your camera will travel between the points you set, and smoothly transition between each nodes orientations. Pressing the action key, which is Z by default, will speed up roll and zoom while holding their respective buttons. COMMAND ⌘
Shutter provides several tools to evaluate your overall camera path to make sure its exactly what you want it to be. Once you have created at least two camera nodes, pressing Numpad 0 by default will toggle rendering the visualization of your path. By default it is a black line, which looks like this:
Image 1: Path visualization, configured to show as a line.
Image 2: Path Render Style, and Node Directional Beams both set to "advanced" mode
Pressing the - minus key on your numpad will open shutters config, here you can customize the path visualization for different usecases under the Visualization
category.
Show Node Heads
Places a numbered camera head over each node, this lets you easily identify a nodes index for adjusting or deleting via command.Show Node Directional Beam
Show: Displays a ray on each placed node showing you the direction of the camera. Advanced: Displays such a ray on every step of the path, this allos you to find parts of your camera movement that might be to fast for viewers to reasonably follow, strong and jarring camera movements can induce nausea in viewers.Path Render Style
Lines: Path visualization will show as a line, as shown in Image 1. Cubes: Path will show each step, both player created nodes, and interpolated steps as equally sized cubes. Advanced: Similar to cubes, however user created nodes are visibly larger, and your start and end node are colored green and red respectively, as shown in image 2.