Camera as child of Object3D positioning issues

Question

Setup a simple scene here:

http://jsfiddle.net/majman/Sps3c/

I was initially trying to demonstrate a problem I was having with rotating a parent container while having the camera maintain it's relative offset position, but when setting up this example I couldn't even adjust the camera's initial position.

Current Problem:

// camera
camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(45, window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight, 5, 150);
camera.position.z = 50; // this doesn't work?

// object to contain camera & helper
cameraContainer = new THREE.Object3D();
cameraContainer.rotation.order = "YXZ"; // maybe not necessary

// add to container
cameraContainer.add(camera);
scene.add(cameraContainer);

Now when rotating the cameraContainer, the camera's rotation follows - but I'd like the camera's position to be offset from the cameraContainer. I'm unable to modify any position properties for some reason.

Answer 1

Your code is working fine. You are confused because the CameraHelper is not displaying the camera in its actual position. You need to add the CameraHelper as a child of the scene.

// camera helper
cameraHelper = new THREE.CameraHelper( camera2 );
scene.add( cameraHelper );

updated fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/Sps3c/1/

Tip: I added an OrbitController to your demo for a better view of the situation.

three.js r.66