Summary
Hey there - I’ve been sticking with Unreal Engine 5.6 for cinematics because of a regression that’s been made to CineCameraActors (specifically the CameraComponent nested inside of them) that’s been in every version since Unreal 5.7+
When using LookAt tracking in a CineCameraActor, the camera aims to keep the target in the exact center of the image. But oftentimes, you’ll want to rotate the camera slightly up, down, left, right etc.
You were able to do this in all versions of Unreal 5.6 and prior by changing the CameraComponent inside of the CineCameraActor. This served as a simple offset to absolutely nail your composition and camera, but it seems like this no longer works in Unreal 5.7+ and I’ve just confirmed it still doesn’t work in Unreal 5.8. If you try to adjust the rotation of the component inside once LookAt tracking is enabled, it simply doesn’t allow you to change the rotation, locking you into center-framing on your offset.
Before 5.7 you could adjust the rotation in the CameraComponent when LookAt tracking was enabled
Now in 5.7+5.8, adjusting the CameraComponent rotation does nothing when LookAt tracking is enabled.
Has anyone found a solution for this or is there a clean way to modify the engine to keep the original behavior of CineCameraActors? This is something I use in 75% of my shots so I’ve been using to Unreal 5.6 and it’s prevented me from using the latest version of Unreal for a while. Cheers!
What Type of Bug are you experiencing?
Other
Steps to Reproduce
In Unreal 5.7+, enable LookAt tracking and assign an Actor to Track. If you try to open up your cinecameraactor and adjust the CameraComponent nested inside, if you use the rotation sliders or type in a number, they do nothing and always default back to a value of zero.
Expected Result
In all previous versions of Unreal, you could use the CameraComponent’s rotation to adjust the composition of your camera while using LookAt tracking. I would expect to be able to use the CameraComponent and it’s rotation to adjust the final rotation of the camera, but now it does not affect the camera’s rotation whatsoever.
Observed Result
Every time you attempt to adjust the CameraComponent’s rotation, it always snaps back to zero and never rotates the camera as intended.
Affects Versions
5.8
5.7
Platform(s)
Windows