You must add a new camera to the comp, so choose Layer New Camera. Leave the camera at the default of 50mm.
The new camera appears at the top of the Timeline. There is a default active camera in the comp already, but this camera replaces it. In the timeline, it appears as Camera 1. It has two advantages: it’s visible in the View panel, and it can be animated. Only cameras that you add to a project are visible in the View panel; all default cameras are invisible. The Active Camera is the only view that will render out of After Effects.
Choose 2 Views Horizontal from the Select View Layout drop-down menu. Set the left view to Custom View 1 and the right to Active Camera. Depending on how you’ve moved the views around, you may have a different Custom View 1 than what is shown in Figure 15-22. If this is the case, use the camera navigation tools to reposition Custom View 1 until it displays a similar angle.
Selecting the Camera to Display the Angle of View
Select Camera 1 in the Timeline panel to see the angle of view that the active camera is recording in Custom View 1. Normally, the lines delineating the camera view aren’t shown, but they appear when the camera is selected. You’ll need to position the layers and precomps inside the angle of view in 3D space. The right side shows the actual view that the active camera records (Figure 15-22).
Remember, if you ever get lost in a View panel, you can choose Edit Deselect All and then press Command/Ctrl+Option/Alt+Shift+ (backslash) to center everything in the view. You can also center a single layer, or a selection of layers, using the same shortcut.
Figure 15-22: Layers in 3D space with the camera selected to show the angle of view
