Using WASD To Control Your Camera In Blender
By Neil Blevins
Created On: June 7th 2026
Updated On: June 23rd 2026
Software: Blender

When creating an animated film, how you move your camera is tremendously important. This short tutorial shows the main ways to go about navigating your scene camera inside of Blender, including the sometimes overlooked WASD method.

Real World Motion Picture Camera

This is a pretty famous graphic showing the proper names for traditional motion picture camera moves. Digital cameras in 3d software have slightly different controls, but it's still important to understand these traditional terms.



Standard Navigation

The most common way to navigate your 3d scene, both in cameras and the viewport, is using a combination of Mouse and Keyboard shortcuts. The controls in Blender for doing this are pretty similar to other 3d packages such as 3dsmax or Maya.

In Blender:
As comparison, here's 3dsmax's mouse and keyboard shortcuts for the same thing.

In 3dsmax:
Note on Orbit in Blender: When orbiting, it will orbit around a point. You can redefine that point it orbits around in several ways, but one of the most common is to select an object, hit the . key on the number pad, or go to View > Frame Selected, it will now frame that particular object, and now when you orbit it uses that selected object as the point you're orbiting around.

Interface Controls

Another way to navigate around with your camera is using the controls in the upper right of the viewport. If you do not have access to a mouse (say you're on a mouseless laptop and you find the trackpad cumbersome), use the following 3 controls, and they can do everything the keyboard / mouse combo can do.



Object Properties

For this method, select the camera you want to change, and use the 3 controls for Location and Rotation in Object Properties. Note that Rotation X, Y and Z correspond to Tilt, Roll and Pan of a real camera, with the pivot point of your camera defined at the base of the camera.



Transform Gizmo

Select the camera you want to move, then hit the Move or rotate buttons on the left. These are pretty much identical to the Object Properties method.



You'll probably notice a big issue right off the bat. This affects the object's position in world space, not the space local to the camera. So if you want to do a camera move like for example a Dolly, you'll need to change the Transform Orientation from Global To Local.



WASD

Now we finally come to WASD mode. To get into this mode, press Shift and ~, or View > Navigation > Walk Navigation. A little cheat sheet comes up at the bottom of the screen:



Here's the main WASD keyboard controls:
It also has other helpful controls, for example the acceleration, which lets you more easily control the speed of how fast the camera moves when you press a button.

For anyone who's played a first person perspective videogame on a computer using a keyboard, this form of navigation should seem very familiar. I got used to these controls back when I played ID software's Doom in the 90s.

In some ways, this may be the best method for controlling your camera, as it most closely resembles how a real world motion picture camera functions.

Another bonus. So when I was teaching high school students, I focused on the Standard Navigation method over WASD, and I realized at the end that might have been a mistake. As a GenXers, first person shooters and 3d software came on the market at about the same time in the 90s, so I learned both navigation methods simultaneously, and so I was adept at both. But for GenZ, they have played first person videogames (like Minecraft) since almost birth, and so they are far more familiar with WASD type controls. So teaching them this method for navigation first might actually be a good idea, it's more comfortable for them and also, as mentioned, more aligned with real world motion picture camera manipulation.

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