Cameras

A Camera is simply a viewport through which the Scene is visualized. Makie offers 2D and 3D projections, and 2D plots can be projected in 3D!

To specify the camera you want to use for your Scene, you can set the camera attribute. Currently, we offer four types of camera:

campixel!cam2d!cam3d!cam3d_cad!

which will mutate the camera of the Scene into the specified type.

Pixel Camera

The pixel camera (campixel!(scene)) projects the scene in pixel space, i.e. each integer step in the displayed data will correspond to one pixel. There are no controls for this camera. The clipping limits are set to (-10_000, 10_000).

2D Camera

The 2D camera (cam2d!(scene)) uses an orthographic projection with a fixed rotation and aspect ratio. You can set the following attributes via keyword arguments in cam2d! or by accessing the camera struct cam = cameracontrols(scene):

  • zoomspeed = 0.10f0 sets the speed of mouse wheel zooms.

  • zoombutton = nothing sets an additional key that needs to be pressed in order to zoom. Defaults to no key.

  • panbutton = Mouse.right sets the mouse button that needs to be pressed to translate the view.

  • selectionbutton = (Keyboard.space, Mouse.left) sets a set of buttons that need to be pressed to perform rectangle zooms.

Note that this camera is not used by Axis. It is used, by default, for 2D LScenes and Scenes.

3D Camera

Camera3D(scene[; attributes...])

Creates a 3d camera with a lot of controls.

The 3D camera is (or can be) unrestricted in terms of rotations and translations. Both cam3d!(scene) and cam3d_cad!(scene) create this camera type. Unlike the 2D camera, settings and controls are stored in the cam.attributes field rather than in the struct directly, but can still be passed as keyword arguments. The general camera settings include

  • fov = 45f0 sets the "neutral" field of view, i.e. the fov corresponding to no zoom. This is irrelevant if the camera uses an orthographic projection.

  • near = automatic sets the value of the near clip. By default this will be chosen based on the scenes bounding box. The final value is in cam.near.

  • far = automatic sets the value of the far clip. By default this will be chosen based on the scenes bounding box. The final value is in cam.far.

  • rotation_center = :lookat sets the default center for camera rotations. Currently allows :lookat or :eyeposition.

  • projectiontype = Perspective sets the type of the projection. Can be Orthographic or Perspective.

  • fixed_axis = false: If true panning uses the (world/plot) z-axis instead of the camera up direction.

  • zoom_shift_lookat = true: If true attempts to keep data under the cursor in view when zooming.

  • cad = false: If true rotates the view around lookat when zooming off-center.

The camera view follows from the position of the camera eyeposition, the point which the camera focuses lookat and the up direction of the camera upvector. These can be accessed as cam.eyeposition etc and adjusted via update_cam!(scene, cameracontrols(scene), eyeposition, lookat[, upvector = Vec3f(0, 0, 1)]). They can also be passed as keyword arguments when the camera is constructed.

The camera can be controlled by keyboard and mouse. The keyboard has the following available attributes

  • up_key = Keyboard.r sets the key for translations towards the top of the screen.

  • down_key = Keyboard.f sets the key for translations towards the bottom of the screen.

  • left_key = Keyboard.a sets the key for translations towards the left of the screen.

  • right_key = Keyboard.d sets the key for translations towards the right of the screen.

  • forward_key = Keyboard.w sets the key for translations into the screen.

  • backward_key = Keyboard.s sets the key for translations out of the screen.

  • zoom_in_key = Keyboard.u sets the key for zooming into the scene (enlarge, via fov).

  • zoom_out_key = Keyboard.o sets the key for zooming out of the scene (shrink, via fov).

  • stretch_view_key = Keyboard.page_up sets the key for moving eyepostion away from lookat.

  • contract_view_key = Keyboard.page_down sets the key for moving eyeposition towards lookat.

  • pan_left_key = Keyboard.j sets the key for rotations around the screens vertical axis.

  • pan_right_key = Keyboard.l sets the key for rotations around the screens vertical axis.

  • tilt_up_key = Keyboard.i sets the key for rotations around the screens horizontal axis.

  • tilt_down_key = Keyboard.k sets the key for rotations around the screens horizontal axis.

  • roll_clockwise_key = Keyboard.e sets the key for rotations of the screen.

  • roll_counterclockwise_key = Keyboard.q sets the key for rotations of the screen.

  • keyboard_rotationspeed = 1f0 sets the speed of keyboard based rotations.

  • keyboard_translationspeed = 0.5f0 sets the speed of keyboard based translations.

  • keyboard_zoomspeed = 1f0 sets the speed of keyboard based zooms.

  • update_rate = 1/30 sets the rate at which keyboard based camera updates are evaluated.

and mouse interactions are controlled by

  • translation_button = Mouse.right sets the mouse button for drag-translations. (up/down/left/right)

  • scroll_mod = true sets an additional modifier button for scroll-based zoom. (true being neutral)

  • rotation_button = Mouse.left sets the mouse button for drag-rotations. (pan, tilt)

  • mouse_rotationspeed = 1f0 sets the speed of mouse rotations.

  • mouse_translationspeed = 0.5f0 sets the speed of mouse translations.

  • mouse_zoomspeed = 1f0 sets the speed of mouse zooming (mousewheel).

  • circular_rotation = (true, true, true) enables circular rotations for (fixed x, fixed y, fixed z) rotation axis. (This means drawing a circle with your mouse around the center of the scene will result in a continuous rotation.)

There are also a few generally applicable controls:

  • fix_x_key = Keyboard.x sets the key for fixing translations and rotations to the (world/plot) x-axis.

  • fix_y_key = Keyboard.y sets the key for fixing translations and rotations to the (world/plot) y-axis.

  • fix_z_key = Keyboard.z sets the key for fixing translations and rotations to the (world/plot) z-axis.

  • reset = Keyboard.home sets the key for fully resetting the camera. This equivalent to setting lookat = Vec3f(0), upvector = Vec3f(0, 0, 1), eyeposition = Vec3f(3) and then calling center!(scene).

You can also make adjustments to the camera position, rotation and zoom by calling relevant functions:

  • translate_cam!(scene, v) will translate the camera by the given world/plot space vector v.

  • rotate_cam!(scene, angles) will rotate the camera around its axes with the corresponding angles. The first angle will rotate around the cameras "right" that is the screens horizontal axis, the second around the up vector/vertical axis or Vec3f(0, 0, +-1) if fixed_axis = true, and the third will rotate around the view direction i.e. the axis out of the screen. The rotation respects the current rotation_center of the camera.

  • zoom!(scene, zoom_step) will change the zoom level of the scene without translating or rotating the scene. zoom_step applies multiplicatively to cam.zoom_mult which is used as a multiplier to the fov (perspective projection) or width and height (orthographic projection).

General Remarks

To force a plot to be visualized in 3D, you can set the limits to have a nonzero (z)-axis interval, or ensure that a 3D camera type is used. For example, you could pass the keyword argument limits = Rect([0,0,0],[1,1,1]), or camera = cam3d!.

Often, when modifying the Scene, the camera can get "out of sync" with the Scene. To fix this, you can call the update_cam! function on the Scene.

Buttons passed to the 2D and 3D camera are forwarded to ispressed. As such you can pass false to disable an interaction, true to ignore a modifier, any button, collection of buttons or even logical expressions of buttons. See the events documentation for more details.