How to add a CamRide to your scene

Guides How to add a CamRide to your scene

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CheersMate

CheersMate

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How to add a CamRide to your scene - Ever wondered how to add a camride to your scene? Well I did.

Ever wondered how to add a CamRide to your scene? Well I did. With some help from the VaM community and a little trial and error, it turns out it's really easy.

Maybe this is common knowledge and I was the last to know about it but just in case others are confused, I thought I'd share what I learned.

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All you really need to know:
Adding the "playerNavCollider" line (see below) to your json save file causes your...
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Read more about this resource...
 
CheersMate said:
Note: It's entirely possible that I'm doing something I'm not supposed to so, if you see a flaw or a simple improvement, please share.
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Just passing by to say that you can do it without the CUA. That'll change your steps 2 & 6.

Use the "WindowCamera" atom instead and turn the Camera on.
1674672622949.png

Big plus with this: you can use the "Show Camera View in HUD", so you don't even need to move around in your scene to see the camera screen when creating your camride. Also you'll have and bigger screen and can change the FOV.

If you want to use the WindowCamera separately, you can use an "Empty" atom instead. Just move the "WindowCamera" to the "Empty" atom position (use the "Select Align To From Scene" button from the "Move" tab to do it in a second) and parent the "WindowCamera" to the "Empty" atom. You can un-parent the "WindowCamera" when you're done.
 
ZRSX said:
Just passing by to say that you can do it without the CUA. That'll change your steps 2 & 6.

Use the "WindowCamera" atom instead and turn the Camera on.
View attachment 204034
Big plus with this: you can use the "Show Camera View in HUD", so you don't even need to move around in your scene to see the camera screen when creating your camride. Also you'll have and bigger screen and can change the FOV.

If you want to use the WindowCamera separately, you can use an "Empty" atom instead. Just move the "WindowCamera" to the "Empty" atom position (use the "Select Align To From Scene" button from the "Move" tab to do it in a second) and parent the "WindowCamera" to the "Empty" atom. You can un-parent the "WindowCamera" when you're done.
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Excellent. Big plus indeed. I'll give it a try and update the guide with this. I've never really used or even known the purpose of the window camera but that makes sense. Thank you.
 
Another way you can do camride, the way I do it at least, is with Timeline and Embody both from AcidBubbles.

1. Add an Empty atom, add the Embody and Timeline plugin to it
2. Enable passenger in the Embody plugin, in here make sure "Lock Position" is checked and if you want to block the user from being able to turn the camera themselves then check "Lock Rotation" too. This way the camera will always look directly where it is pointed, which is the direction of the blue arrow when moving it around.
3. In Timeline, add the 'control' node from the Empty atom. Now you can animate movement and rotation of the Empty atom to act as your camera.
 
Omega said:
Another way you can do camride, the way I do it at least, is with Timeline and Embody both from AcidBubbles.

1. Add an Empty atom, add the Embody and Timeline plugin to it
2. Enable passenger in the Embody plugin, in here make sure "Lock Position" is checked and if you want to block the user from being able to turn the camera themselves then check "Lock Rotation" too. This way the camera will always look directly where it is pointed, which is the direction of the blue arrow when moving it around.
3. In Timeline, add the 'control' node from the Empty atom. Now you can animate movement and rotation of the Empty atom to act as your camera.
Click to expand...
Sounds interesting. It had never occurred to me to try and Embody an Empty Atom. I'll have to experiment with that. Seems like that should eliminate the potential of getting out of wack with the intended cam ride view. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
First of all, thank you for this guide!
Personally, I use a "bug" in the game to have a camride. By changing the name of the windows camera to camride for example, then restarting Vam, I have two windows cameras (the one whose name I changed and a new one which appears with the name window camera). I use this method because it allows me to use the "show camera view in hud" to frame the way I want.
But I have the impression (to my knowledge) of being the only one to use this method so I wonder if this could pose a problem somewhere even if for my part, I have not noticed any particular problems.
 
JBRootProd said:
First of all, thank you for this guide!
Personally, I use a "bug" in the game to have a camride. By changing the name of the windows camera to camride for example, then restarting Vam, I have two windows cameras (the one whose name I changed and a new one which appears with the name window camera). I use this method because it allows me to use the "show camera view in hud" to frame the way I want.
But I have the impression (to my knowledge) of being the only one to use this method so I wonder if this could pose a problem somewhere even if for my part, I have not noticed any particular problems.
Click to expand...
Good idea. That seems safe enough, but I've always thought the window camera had a bigger purpose than what I'm aware of so I mostly leave it alone. I did accidentally add a second one to my latest scene and realized there's no delete option for them. Very strange. But as I'm typing this I'm thinking maybe I can add the extra one to subscene and delete that way.
 
CheersMate updated How to add a CamRide to your scene with a new update entry:

Alternate (super quick) CamRide position recording procedure

I'd streamlined the position capture process from previous suggestion. Instead of Step 6 in Method 2, where I say manually place the CamRide atom in the animation at 5 sec intervals, you may want to just zoom the mouse around while the animation plays and use that as the CamRide.
Details at bottom of 'Overview' section.
Click to expand...

Read the rest of this update entry...
 
With all the updates I'm not fully following this guide. Is the goal to do a camera ride of the "Main Camera" or the "Monitor" (AKA WindowCamera)?

I recently took another crack at this myself, and I came up with the following, which is how I've started animating the "Monitor":

On the WindowCamera object's main controls:
  • Enable "Posessable" and "Allow Possess/Grab" for Pos & Rotate (so you can use native possession functionality to pan and rotate camera in 1st person)
  • Note that you also need to enable the checkbox alongside the main object UI to allow mousemove driven pan and rotate.
  • Use the Tab key while possessing WindowCamera to rotate it.
  • Optionally as desired:
    • Enable "Camera On" if you want live updates of what the camera is seeing.
    • Show Camera View in HUD, which can provide a picture in picture type display of the camera's current view (if Camera On is also enabled)
The DisplayControl object is an optional in-world "screen" for the live camera feed, which is linked to the WindowCamera by default, but you can unlink it and move it somewhere else as desired. For example, you may want it to act as a display within a TV screen object, or you may just want to move it way off screen to avoid it showing up in the camera's view with a sort of hall of mirrors effect.

I add a timeline plugin directly on the WindowCamera, and add its control as a Target. Then I can possess the WindowCamersa, leaving the timeline window open, and shuttle the timeline to where I want a keyframe for the camera, using tab, mouse and keyboard to position and orient the WindowCamera I'm possessing as desired, setting a keyframe once I'm happy with that, then shuttle to the next time, move and rotate again, and so on, until I have all the keyframes I want.

When it's time to play it back, I can run the timeline, press "M" to switch to the monitor, and ride along the timeline across all the keyframes I created.

This only involves the native objects already added to every new scene and one plugin, the timeline. It seems simple to me, but maybe I'm missing something about what you're after. For one thing, this is all about the "Monitor" rather than the "Main Camera", so things like Post Effects tend to not affect the view from the Monitor.

Anyway, I'm curious if that is helpful to anyone or if there's something I'm missing you can point out to me. Regardless, thanks for sharing what you found.
 
Last edited:
AlienAxeMan said:
With all the updates I'm not fully following this guide. Is the goal to do a camera ride of the "Main Camera" or the "Monitor" (AKA WindowCamera)?

I recently took another crack at this myself, and I came up with the following, which is how I've started animating the "Monitor":

On the WindowCamera object's main controls:
  • Enable "Posessable" and "Allow Possess/Grab" for Pos & Rotate (so you can use native possession functionality to pan and rotate camera in 1st person)
  • Note that you also need to enable the checkbox alongside the main object UI to allow mousemove driven pan and rotate.
  • Use the Tab key while possessing WindowCamera to rotate it.
  • Optionally as desired:
    • Enable "Camera On" if you want live updates of what the camera is seeing.
    • Show Camera View in HUD, which can provide a picture in picture type display of the camera's current view (if Camera On is also enabled)
The DisplayControl object is an optional in-world "screen" for the live camera feed, which is linked to the WindowCamera by default, but you can unlink it and move it somewhere else as desired. For example, you may want it to act as a display within a TV screen object, or you may just want to move it way off screen to avoid it showing up in the camera's view with a sort of hall of mirrors effect.

I add a timeline plugin directly on the WindowCamera, and add its control as a Target. Then I can possess the WindowCamersa, leaving the timeline window open, and shuttle the timeline to where I want a keyframe for the camera, using tab, mouse and keyboard to position and orient the WindowCamera I'm possessing as desired, setting a keyframe once I'm happy with that, then shuttle to the next time, move and rotate again, and so on, until I have all the keyframes I want.

When it's time to play it back, I can run the timeline, press "M" to switch to the monitor, and ride along the timeline across all the keyframes I created.

This only involves the native objects already added to every new scene and one plugin, the timeline. It seems simple to me, but maybe I'm missing something about what you're after. For one thing, this is all about the "Monitor" rather than the "Main Camera", so things like Post Effects tend to not affect the view from the Monitor.

Anyway, I'm curious if that is helpful to anyone or if there's something I'm missing you can point out to me. Regardless, thanks for sharing what you found.
Click to expand...

Wow. I've never really known what the "possessable" checkbox in the controls tab of objects/nodes was for. I just assumed it was a legacy thing that had been supplanted by better options (like Timeline replaced "Scene Animation"). After your instructions plus this wiki: https://hub.virtamate.com/threads/04-navigation.55125/ I think I get it. I played with it for a minute and, yes this looks like a good way to accomplish my goal of having a node follow my viewpoint around so I can record it in Timeline.
Couple caveats:
  • The pan/zoom movement with possession was a good bit slower than what I'm used to with the normal "right mouse button" + mouse + mousewheel + asdw movement keys navigation. I could hold shift down to speed things up but again this was not ideal. I think maybe it comes down to what I'm used to with navigation.
  • I like the dedicated CamRide atom vs using the WindowCamera just to free up the WindowCamera for potential other uses. Of course I could just possess the Empty atom and solve that, or parent link it, or ...
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As far as my intent for the guide, yeah, the updates have probably made the whole thing a little disjointed. When I started I wanted to just emulate the camrides I saw in other scenes. i.e. The ones that take the viewer for a ride during the timeline animation instead of them having control over their perspective.
Initially I only knew how to do this with the Navigation Panel (not ideal but I kept it as Option 2), then I started using an Empty Atom with Embody plugin (I still really prefer this method). And then finally, the most recent update was just an alternative recording method. Originally I recommended stepping through the timeline animation and moving the CamRide atom to the desired spot at the timestep, but then I was thinking it would be nice to just run the animation at full speed and circle/zoom/etc on the target in real time while recording. Your possession suggestion, whether possessing the WindowCamera or the Empty CamRide atom, seems to work equally well for this purpose except for the previously mentioned slower panning movement with possession.

Thanks for the feedback. I definitely learned something. Now that I finally know what the Navigation->Possess controls are for maybe I'll start considering how to take advantage of that feature.
 
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