base.cam vs base.camera

General Discussion
1

In the manual (panda3d.org/manual/index.php/Camera_Control) it says

I have a very simple scene in which I wanted to set the initial camera position.
I tried

base.camera.setPos(self.scene, dx, dy, dz)

, but that didn’t work.
Thus, I tried

base.cam.setPos(self.scene, dx, dy, dz)

, which did work. However, I don’t know why.

What is the difference between base.cam and base.camera and why do I need to setPos on base.cam?

2

Perhaps you did not call base.disableMouse(), which disables the default mouse control. The default mouse controls take control over base.camera.

As the manual page states, base.cam is a NodePath pointing to the actual Camera node, whereas base.camera == base.cam.getParent().

base.camera is actually a special ModelNode that prevents the camera from being flattened together with the rest of the scene when you do something like render.flattenStrong(). It also can act as a grouping when you have a scene with multiple cameras that need to be positioned together.

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