Camera Path - Feedback thread

My main issue with the camera path editor is not being able to rotate the markers inside of it, instead having to use the map editor. I guess having a way to rotate them while still being in the camera path editor would help make camera path stuff so much quicker, especially as someone who does movie stuff, it would help speed up the process a ton.

Not sure how possible this one is, but making it have a better detection to markers being moved, as if you have two markers after the other facing opposite ways, sometimes the camera moves and looks up or down a lot and is annoying to fix, a better way to avoid that could be helpful.

 

Listed four suggestions

 

Make it so I can change the In-Game time after making a replay and playing it back. it's very frustrating, when i'm trying to replicate a shot from a movie or a game, and I have to guess the time before making the replay

 

Cam path recommendations, heavily inspired by: () Good watch for a summary and understanding of some of my recommendations.)

Thank you for making this Feedback thread Tdev! You're the best. You and every single one of the developers! gahhh I love this game so muchhhh. I’ve teared up multiple times today. Now that I'm done gushing lol, let me get to business!


I have these in no particular order from 1-16. Some may have already been brought up in old threads, and some may be really hard to implement. This list is a general idea space for suggestions; most stuff here is not needed but rather a quality-of-life suggestion. Other than that, I do really believe these would be very useful, and benefit most of those of all backgrounds who use the camera path.


1. In the campath mode, when you make a marker, and you press the preview marker button, it just brings you to the location of the marker. Another button to bring you to the location and the exact time the marker is at would be extremely useful.

2. Shift click creating a marker should be a changeable key bind; there currently is no way to unbind this that I know of. There are a good handful of times (pretty much every time I am making a large cam path) I have accidentally made a marker by doing this while using shift+right click to move quicker without noticing I did it.

3. To add to Shados' suggestion of the rotation. Perhaps a rotation slider could be the right approach to this? Or a key bind to let your camera rotate? Ex: Shifting and holding the right click would allow you to rotate the camera left or right depending on the movement of your mouse. A key bind to make that rotation slower, such as shift+ctrl+right click, would let you do the same rotation but slower for accuracy when needed.

4. This one might be a little intensive on the coding side, but if we could have the option to have something similar to relative cam integrated into the campath mode as an option for certain markers?

4.1 This could be something that ties into the vehicle's position; when vehicles accelerate or decelerate, they follow a nonlinear forward movement, which means you have to create a ton more cam path markers to accurately follow this movement.
5. Below 10 FOV?

6. “Teleport to selected vehicle” and “teleport to selected vehicle based on the relative position to the last cam marker and vehicle”. When making campaths with very fast-moving cars and needing to make smaller adjustments to the camera positions, this would help a ton.

7. Camera position smoothing. I believe the current position smoothing uses a bezier curve; if we could get the option to change the style of the position smoothing between, ease in, ease out, and bezier curves for certain cam path markers, that would be amazing.

8. It's a little bit of a small QOL addition, but when saving a campath, the box with the file name should autofill to whatever the current name of the campath is so we don’t have to put the name twice.

9. A way to select multiple markers; this way you can change multiple parameters of the cam path markers at a time, like position, FOV, time of day, time speed, etc…

10. More keyframing options besides the cam markers. Having options to keyframe, the time of day, render name tags (for the future xD), fog intensity, color, etc...

11. Perhaps a UI overhaul for the cam path editor if all these changes were added? Could add an advanced tab with more niche features so it doesn’t get bloated for newer users?

11.1 - For the UI overhaul, having a collapsible keyframing timeline sequence menu for all the changes like the position, camera shake, time of day, etc… This menu should only bring up each timeline sequence if a keyframe has been added to avoid clutter. Could add a “show hidden timeline sequences” button to show the ones that haven’t been keyframed yet.

11.2 (Perhaps 11.1 could be hidden in the advanced tab I suggested?)

11.3 If a single keyframe or multiple keyframes are selected in the timeline sequence you should be able to move them relatively with an ALT click hold. Example at 03:48 ()

11.4 One useful feature could be to have the option to move different ui apps to other monitors if you have a multi-monitor setup. This is more of a general UI suggestion, but it would be cool if it worked in the F11 menu as well.

12. Varying levels of camera shake presets to add to each marker, ie.
Held camera shake.
Intense camera shake.
Moderate camera shake.
Light camera shake.
Camera shake/movement that is based on the g-forces of the current object the camera is tied to. Ie: the vehicle


13. Just how we could tie the camera to look at the vehicle, being able to tie the camera to look at certain vehicle parts like the wheels, truck bed, box props attached to the car, etc. This could be tied into the suggestion of having something similar to relative cam integrated into the campath mode. Where the camera can be tied to either looking at a vehicle part, the relative position of a vehicle part, or both at the same time.

13.1 Perhaps there can be a feature to tie 13. to a particular node/vertex to add more complexity and quality to a given shot. (You could use a color picker-inspired system to pick the node or something similar to the node grabber where you select a given node.)

14. Having options to keyframe the rendering of, particles, certain vehicles, skybox, ambient occlusion strength, certain vehicle parts, etc. With all of these becoming more opacified or more visible in between key frames. And as such, if two keyframes are at the same spot, it happens instantly.

14.1 When turning off the rendering of the world objects with the feature mentioned above, there should be an option to customize the skybox and background that is native to the camera path editor so we can turn it green and key out the background with 3rd party editing software during post-production.

15. Not really a suggestion; I think..? In the cinematic trailers for the game there are shots with the suspension geometry and or inside parts visible in a really cool way while the vehicle is also visible. I was wondering how this is done. This would be really useful for educational vehicle physics demonstrations. As seen in this video at 00:31. ()

16. Add keybinds for every button that could be used in the cam path UI.

Credits:
TalksWithNoise for many improvements to this list and some added suggestions.


Gushing pt.2 the sequel:

Thank you all for reading this.
Tdev, if you are reading this as well. You making this thread after I asked about cam paths in the Beamcord really meant the world to me. This is why you, and the whole team, are amazing. Being able to be a part of this community is an amazing experience. You don't get many game developers and games these days that have such a vibrant, loving, amazing, and transparent community. I know there is the occasional hate comment and youngins out there that don't realize the impact of their messages. So, I just want to say to every dev, every modder, and even those who just play casually; despite the occasional negative comment or misunderstanding, the heart of this community is full of passion, creativity, and respect. Every dev, every modder, and even the casual players all contribute to something bigger than just a game. You’re creating experiences, memories, and many friendships that will last a lifetime. For those hard times we all experience, I hope for you to remember the impact you’re having on people who love and appreciate your work. Keep doing what you do—because, for every critical voice, there are countless others who see the love and effort behind it all. You’re making a difference in ways you may not even realize, and for that, I’m extraordinarily thankful. ^-^

 

The path camera FOV breaks alot, specially if im doing rolling shots with 2 cars (A car thats filming and the other car that's driving), the camera stays at a constant 10 FOV despite each shot being of varying FOVs. If there could be a fix for this it would be great, specially for someone who uses the tool alot.

 

I eventually figured out a fix but it was really random and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, i dont have any camera mods and this sometimes happens out of nowhere.

 

A big thank you to tdev for this thread!
For quite some time now, I've been wanting something that could help me achieve the effects of Polyphony Digital's late '00s-onward style of cinematography. A while ago, I created a thread asking for Dutch angle/roll support before realizing that that was already possible with camera roll key binds. That said, there are still a few things that can't easily be achieved with the current camera path implementation (at least not to my knowledge):

• Relative cam
• Camera shake

To add to the quoted post:



The above example has plenty of shots where the camera appears fixed to the car's position, in particular the B-pillar at 0:38, the front suspension at 0:43, and the right headlight at 0:41 and 0:49.

Camera shake is also used throughout to augment the visual feeling of speed, as with the example below too, particularly from the 5:11 mark with the 458 and LFA (which also appear to use relative cam shots). In line with said 458 and LFA shots, perhaps a "faux turbulence" camera shake effect that varies in intensity based on a) vehicle speed and b) camera proximity to vehicle could be considered, though manual keyframing and intensity adjustment works too.

• Depth of field control

This should be self-explanatory. I wouldn't mind it being simplified to just an aperture size/f-stop setting and a focal length setting. Obligatory example (0:20 to 0:47):

• Player vehicle tracking offset

What do I mean by this? Well, the "track player vehicle" checkbox does its job, but in my experience, it always ends up aligning the player vehicle to the centre of the frame, and not, say, the left or right two-thirds of the frame.
I could see this being done one of two ways: a) a 3D offset point relative to the player vehicle's ref nodes (i.e. a metre or two in front of the car to add more of the road ahead to the frame, or to create a focal point on the car, such as a headlight), or b) a slight rotational offset of the camera (i.e. so that the player vehicle can be aligned to a thirds grid intersection).

As an aside, is the team aware of auto-exposure currently being broken (as in non-functional), and/or are there plans to implement it in an official capacity?