Pighaus Games Docs

These docs describe 1.1, the version on Fab. 1.3 is in testing: read its docs, or what changes when you upgrade.

SequencerExperimental

Blendable's own tracks for your cutscenes, including a smooth hand-back to gameplay. Everything a track does stops by itself, so a cutscene can never strand the player.

They all live under one Blendable submenu in the add-track list.

TrackWhat it does
Camera TransitionHands the shot back to gameplay across the section, blending position, rotation, FOV and post process together
ShakePlays a Blendable shake: looping across the section, or once on each key
Camera PresetUses a Preset for the section, or switches to one for good at a key
Blendable Look AtAims the camera at the actor bound to it, or between them when you bind several, nudged by its offset
Effects ScaleSets how strong shakes and handheld motion are for the section
Cinematic ModePuts the camera into cinematic mode for the section

Handing back to gameplay without a cut#

Going into a cutscene, use the Camera Cut track's own Ease In: it already blends properly. Coming back out, Unreal cuts straight to the gameplay camera with no way to soften it. That's the gap Camera Transition fills. Put a section at the end of your sequence and the shot eases from the cinematic camera to the live gameplay camera, which keeps following the player the whole time, so the blend lands wherever they actually are.

It can't strand the player#

Sequencer stops running a section the moment the playhead leaves it, without telling anyone. So nothing here waits to be told to stop: every section says what it wants every frame, and anything that stops being asked for stops happening. Scrubbing past a section, closing a sequence mid-shake, or skipping the whole thing all clean up the same way.

Shakes#

A Shake track plays one shake asset, depending on its mode:

  • Looping shakes run across the whole section and fade out when it ends.
  • One-shot shakes fire on keys, at the strength of the key's value.

Look At#

Aims the camera at a bound actor or a world point. Bind two actors and it frames both, which is what a two-hander conversation needs.

Effects Scale#

Sets how strong shakes and handheld motion are for the section. It's an absolute value, not a multiplier: set 0.5 and effects sit at half strength whatever gameplay was doing, easing there from wherever they were and easing back when the section ends.

Go deeperWhy the transition isn't a copy of Camera Cut

It looks like a reimplementation of the Camera Cut track at first. It isn't. Going in, Camera Cut's Ease In blends through the camera manager's view-target blend, and a second system doing the same job would only fight it. Blendable has an "into" direction as well, but it's deprecated and hidden for exactly that reason.

Coming out, the engine performs a straight SetViewTarget with no blend and no built-in way to add one. The transition track fills that gap, and it brings shakes and post process with it, not just position and rotation.

Go deeperWhy everything expires by itself

There's no "section ended" callback in Sequencer to hang cleanup on. A section that switched something on and waited to be told to switch it off would leave it on whenever the playhead jumped, the sequence closed early, or the editor scrubbed past at speed.

Publishing every frame makes the safe outcome the default. The failure that matters most is a cutscene that never gives the player their input back, and with this design that can't happen: stop asking and the input comes back.

Go deeperShake and Look At details

One-shot shakes fire for every key inside the stretch the playhead covered this frame, not just the frame it landed on. At speed, or on a long frame, a key would otherwise be stepped straight over and the shake would never happen. Loop a sequence and the one-shots fire again on each pass.

Look At's offset is applied per actor in that actor's own space, so a chest-height offset follows each of them properly when two are bound.

Effects Scale releases over the section's own ease, so one handle shapes both ends.