UPDATES/RELEASES:

We are continually working to improve Cinemotion. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please check you have the latest version downloaded. You may have to delete local files and restart the Epic Games launcher. For any issues, please email support@cinetexture.com where we’d be glad to help with anything.

WHAT IS CINEMOTION?

Cinemotion is a library of organised and standardised motion tracked cameras for use in Cinematics & Virtual Filmmaking in UE5. This specific version for UE5 is conformed to match the unit base (cm) of UE5, for use with sequencer.

Check out the Quickstart guide for more info:

GETTING STARTED

Although the project comes with an example map, the only files that you require are the ‘camera animation sequence’ assets. We recommend storing them on your hard drive for easy importing to your own projects, without needing to open the example scene each time. You can right-click and migrate the ‘CinemotionCameraSequences’ folder to use them in other projects (NOTE: you only need this folder, not the entire project). A video of the migration steps are shown further down in this article.

ABOUT THE CAMERA FILES

The 98 unique cameras are organised in a few variations to give you more options when it comes to using them in your scene.

Firstly, you can choose between RotationAndTranslation, or RotationOnly versions. The RotationOnly variants have the translation of the camera zeroed-out, which may be desirable if you want to remove unwanted foreground motion, have a more predictable camera position, or just have less movement on the camera.

Each shot type has multiple takes indicated by the letter A,B,C and so forth.

Additionally, each camera is available in multiple pre-baked smoothing levels indicated by the Smooth suffix. Choose Smooth0 for the raw motion data, up to Smooth4 - which has a heavy amount of smoothing applied if you want to soften the motion.

ABOUT USING CAMERA FILES IN UE4

In version 2.0 it’s now easier to apply and customise the camera motion. As long as the Camera Animation Sequence folder lives in your project - you are able to apply camera animation directly in the sequencer.

If you add any CineCamera to the sequencer, the camera animation list will be populated with different clips you can apply, as shown in the image above.

This is also useful as you can easily test out different camera options - and the shot will stay framed as intended. Also your camera settings (such as focal length, aperture etc) will remain, unlike the old FBX import method.

Camera animation will apply additively to your current camera position and framing dictated by the transform track (if you have one). NOTE: IF YOUR CAMERA POSITION IS BEING OVERRIDDEN, RIGHT-CLICK THE RED TEMPLATE ANIMATION CLIP AND UNDER PROPERTIES SET THE ‘HEIRACHICAL BIAS’ TO 0. THIS IS THE DEFAULT AS OF 4.26+

STEPS TO IMPORT CINEMOTION TO YOUR PROJECT

Make sure you have copied/migrated the ‘CinemotionCameraSequences’ folder to the ‘Content’ folder of your own project. NOTE: you don’t need to migrate the whole project, just the CinemotionCameraSequences folder.


1) Add a Cine Camera to the scene.

2) Create a Level Sequence and add the Cine Camera to it.

3) On the camera track, press the + ‘add track’ button.

5) Under the Camera Animation list, select an asset to use.

You should see a red ‘template animation’ track appear. Position this clip on the timeline.

TIPS / CUSTOMISATION

• You can slide the red template clip around to experiment with the timing.

• Drag the handles at either end to trim the clip.

• You can also right-click and set the clip speed from the properties list (1=full speed, 0.5=half speed etc).

• You can layer and cross fade clips by overlapping them, or stacking them together.

• Since Unreal 4.27+ you can now individually adjust the translation and rotation influence directly in the master sequence. Right-click the template sequence and enable the property multipliers to expose the tracks on the sequencer. This is very useful to adjust the clips non-destructively. You can even keyframe these properties.

• On older versions of Unreal (pre 4.27) To adjust the influence/amount of camera motion, double click the template animation clip. This will open the subsequence with the keyframes on. First right-click the section and ensure the ‘weight’ track is enabled. You can adjust this number (0 = no influence, 0.5 half the motion, and so on). Note: This will affect any other instance of that template animation. So if you want to make a change on a single clip, we’d suggest you duplicate the clip.

• To avoid both Translation & Rotation as well as Rotation Only clips appearing in your Camera Animation list, remove the folder that you aren’t using in your project.

• To make it easier to use the assets in multiple projects. Store the assets somewhere handy on your hard drive, then you can easily copy them in to any projects ‘Content’ folder.

GENERAL FAQs

What’s wrong with procedural/keyframed camera motion or shake?

You can get away with it, but often procedural motion feels a little artificial. For those that want access to a simple, drag & drop library of real human motion we created Cinemotion.

Because Cinemotion is tracked from real cameras, these clips replicate the natural weight of a camera rig along with the behaviour of operating like a real human. This method captures the subtleties of breathing, moving, and reactive motion that characterises realistic handheld movement.

Although there’s no substitute for shooting bespoke cameras for your scene, I want to offer everyone the feel of virtual production with the convenience of ready to go assets. I found that most of the time i’d use the same shots again and again, so why not have some to hand.

I feel there’s enough versatility and variety that these clips can help save you a bunch of time and increase production value in your cinematics.

All the idles and framing moves are calibrated around world 0, and are all axis-aligned making it really easy for you to move, rotate and re-frame the shots to suit your needs.

How are these shot?

These are captured using a cine-style shoulder rig. The cameras default to 18mm when you load them but you can choose any lens length you want. There are variations for less or more motion, as well as pre-baked smoothing levels for every shot.

What about apps?

Whilst they are really cool, I found using apps are sometimes a pain to setup, they would often drop frames and also not carry the weight and movement of a film style camera. Most of the time I needed the same sorts of motion, so to have something ready-to-go and calibrated in local space seemed like a really useful option.

What is this for?

I was using this technique so much in my own work, so I decided it’d be useful for others. Originally it was very manual pipeline for capturing and exporting cameras, so I put a lot of time in to scaling it up to create a broader library of well-organised and standardised assets.

Can I customise the clips?

It’s really simple to add regular keyframes on top of all the idle clips to create a natural layer of motion. Other moves can easily be re-framed by simply rotating and translating. As all the clips are conformed around world zero, it makes it very easy to customise them in a matter of seconds. Make sure to set the clips ‘Hierarchical Bias’ to 0 if you want to apply Cinemotion on top of existing keyframes. This can be accessed by right-clicking the clip and setting the value in the properties list. (This is the default as of 4.26+)

Do the cameras loop?

Rather than doing any edits or unnatural blends, I decided to shoot long 30 second takes which should cover most shots you’d want to achieve. In Cinemotion 2.0 you can use the template animation blending function, where overlapping clips will crossfade together.

Similar to looping of video - you can create a seamless loop by crossfading back to the start. For example: Trim 50 frames from the start of your template sequence. Alt-drag a second copy to the end of the first clip. On this second copy, drag the trimmed start back out over the original clip. This will create a 50f crossfade at the end where the last frame is equal to the first frame. Set your sequence-out point to the end of the crossfade duration and check your seamless loop.

All the idles are 30 seconds, and most of the framing moves end in 30s idles (except where it doesn’t make sense such as continuous pans).