Camera Work Public Asset

Inspiration

This one was inspired by my very first world. There was a little bee and a flower asset where the bee would follow the flower. I wanted to make a conservatory and animate butterflies and insects but the hand animation was so choppy I almost gave up on the idea. But then I had an epiphany! I could record the flower's movement instead! Then if made the flower invisible, suddenly the bee was flying smoothly throughout my world (chasing an invisible flower). Brilliant!

What it does

This asset creates smooth camera movements for cinematic shots that will always keep the subject in view.

How we built it

I record, in VR, an an animated object in space. I don't need to care about its rotation, only it's position. A Gimbal object follows the animated object with smoothing. While it follows, it looks at a variable target which can move or be attached to a player. When the recording is done, the objects MUST be returned to it's starting position and rotation exactly. (I use world snapping) Some steps, press play and you can cinematic magic!

Challenges we ran into

Swapping between VR and desktop to record then watch the results is a challenge. It's best to have two accounts running so you don't kick yourself out of each instance. Forgeting to reset the obj to its start position lead to a lot of 'dang it!' moments. If the camera is too close to your avatar they go invisible and it ruins the shot so you want to make sure to keep your distance which is a problem for close ups.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Ok, I had fun with this one. While messing with this, I was imagining VR players grabbing one of these 'camera objects' (which could theoretically do selfie and front facing swap) and host a live video feed of their avatar for Horizon mobile users, who would essentially be along for the ride.