How to zoom in a camera in Godot

Camera is a good fit when you have a large canvas you are only showing part of (outside of a scrollcontainer...)

Zoom opposite

The camera's zoom. A zoom of Vector(2, 2) doubles the size seen in the viewport. A zoom of Vector(0.5, 0.5) halves the size seen in the viewport. S

set_zoom(Vector2(1,1)) will set the zoom to "normal", 1 world pixel fills 1 screen pixel.
set_zoom(Vector2(0.5,0.5)) should zoom in (as in, one world pixel will fill 4 screen pixels).
set_zoom(Vector2(2,2)) should zoom out (as in 4 world pixels will fill 1 screen pixel)

https://ask.godotengine.org/13764/what-does-camera2d-set_zoom-do-exactly-confusing-results

How to exclude certain nodes from the camera zoom?

The position of the camera within the tree matters not. Zoom is specific to the canvas layer. Which you can manipulate individually via the scale property. https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/11cmo09/possible_to_use_camera2d_zoom_only_for_a_specific/

Put those nodes in a canvasLayer node. That renders it seperately and exclude it from the zoom!!!

https://ask.godotengine.org/1336/best-way-to-realize-zoom-and-scroll-behavior-like-in-editor

NOTE

Do NOT listen for zoom input on the same layer that you are zooming. It messes up the zoom operation. Better way is to listen via unhandled input so it's totally separate. (as shown here:) https://kidscancode.org/godot_recipes/3.x/2d/touchscreen_camera/index.html

Reading...

https://godotlearn.com/godot-3-1-how-to-move-objects/