BlendshotBlendshot
Finishers and kill cams. Camera shots keyed in Level Sequences that take over from your camera as a takedown starts or a projectile flies, slow the world for the moment that matters, and hand back without a cut.
A takedown lands, or an arrow leaves the bow, and for a couple of seconds the game turns into a film. That's Blendshot. A shot is an ordinary Level Sequence with a camera in it, keyed once. Blendshot plays it on whoever's involved, wherever they're standing, keeps its camera out of the walls round them, and blends back to your camera as if it had never left.
It comes in two kinds:
Finishers.
Shots for two people meeting: a takedown, a finishing move, an execution. A finisher starts by itself when the attacker's animation starts, keyed from where they stand and in time with the blows.
Kill cams.
Shots that ride a projectile from the shooter to the one it kills: an arrow, a bullet, a thrown knife, a spell. Each is in three parts, the release, the flight and the impact, so one shot works over any distance.
What ships#
There are shots to start from in Blendable Content › Blendshot. None of them points at anything outside the plugin, so they work in any project: no animations named, no sounds, no effects you'd need another plugin for.
| Asset | What it is |
|---|---|
| Finisher_Takedown | four shots for any takedown: High Angle, Low Hero, Over The Shoulder and Side Orbit. It starts by itself on any animation with Takedown, Finisher or Execution in its name |
| Finisher_LastFoe | two endings for the last foe of a fight, Slow Fall and Crane Away |
| KillCam_Bullet | Chase, Orbit and From The Target, riding the bullet Blendable sends down a hitscan shot |
| KillCam_Arrow | Chase, Alongside and From The Target |
| KillCam_Thrown | Alongside, Orbit and Chase, for a knife or anything else that's thrown |
| KillCam_Spell | Chase, Orbit and From The Target |
Finishers and Kill cams have the details, and every kill cam shot on film.
The Blendshot component#
Add a Blendshot component to the character whose shots they are: the one doing the takedown, or the one firing. Give it your finishers under Finishers and your kill cams under Kill Cams.
That's all a finisher needs. With Start When The Animation Plays on, the component listens for its character's animations starting, and when a finisher has a shot for that animation, it plays it on whoever started the other half at the same moment. Nothing goes in your montages and nothing in your Blueprints.
A kill cam needs one call, because only your game knows a shot is going to kill:
| Node | What it does |
|---|---|
| Play Kill Cam | rides a projectile your game has fired, an arrow, a knife, a spell. Call it as the projectile's released, with whoever it's going to kill |
| Send A Bullet | for a hitscan shot, which has nothing in it to follow: sends a bullet you can see down the shot's line and rides that |
| Play Finisher | plays a finisher on someone, for one you'd rather start yourself |
| Set Last Foe and Last Foe Down | tell Blendshot who the fight's last foe is, and that they're down, for the endings |
| Stop Finisher | stops whatever's playing and hands straight back |
| Kill Cam Impact | tells a kill cam its projectile has hit, for a hit it wouldn't see by itself |
On Finisher Started, On Finisher Ended, On Kill Cam Started and On Kill Cam Ended tell your game when one begins and when it's handed back, so you can hide the HUD, mute the music or start a slow clap.
While a shot plays on the player's own screen, their input is held: nothing they press reaches their character, so it isn't walked or turned under the shot, and everything comes back as the shot hands back.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Holds Their Input | on, the default, holds the player's input while a shot plays on their screen. Off, they can move and look as it plays |
| Keeps Held | input actions held down as a shot starts that stay held all through it: Aim for a bow, so a drawn bow stays drawn. One let go of during the shot is let go of as it ends, an ordinary release |
Handing over and back#
While a shot plays, its sequence's camera is the view. Your own camera carries on underneath, on a stripped-back takedown rig: the rig you were on with only where it sits, its lens, its collision and its see-through, and nothing that moves it by itself. A lock-on's framing, a point of interest, a wobble from a shake: none of it reaches the camera underneath, so the blend back lands on something still. Then your camera eases into the rig after.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Blend In Time | how long the shot takes to blend in from your camera: 0.25 seconds by default, 0 cuts |
| Hand Back | Blend, Facing The Next Foe, the default, turns your camera towards the nearest foe still standing as it blends back. Blend Back As It Was returns to the view you left. Cut Back cuts |
| Hand Back Time | how long the blend back takes, finishing as the shot ends: 0.6 seconds |
| Next Foe Within | how far off a foe can be and still be the one you're turned towards: 20 metres |
| Takedown Rig Underneath | on, the default, as above. Off, the blend back lands on your rig as it is |
| Then Hand Back To | a rig to ease into afterwards, made the one you stand on, in place of the rig from before |
| Ease Back Over | how long your camera takes to ease from the takedown rig into the rig after |
Walls#
Before a shot plays, Blendshot reads its camera's path out of the sequence, lays it down where it's about to play and checks it against the level. A shot that would put its camera in a wall, or lose sight of who it's on, goes down a list, each step a switch:
| In order | What happens |
|---|---|
| Mirror The Shot | plays it mirrored, from the other side of the attacker's forward line, when that's clear |
| Try The Others | failing that, another shot that fits and is clear |
| Push The Camera Out | failing that, plays the one picked anyway, its camera pushed out of whatever it goes into, towards who it's on. It does this for every shot as it plays, in case something's moved since the check |
| Stay On Play's Camera | failing that, nothing plays and it all happens on your own camera |
Must See Them counts a shot as clear only if whoever it's on can be seen from its camera too, for Seen For of the shot, 85% by default. See Through To Them opens up anything between the camera and them with your rig's own see-through, so a pillar between you doesn't make a shot fail. Mirrored By Chance plays a clear shot mirrored anyway now and then, for more out of the same shots. Advanced settings choose what counts as a wall: the channel, whether people standing about do, and tags that never do.
Blendable.Blendshot.ShowChecks 1 draws every check in the level as it's made, and with LogBlendable at Verbose the log says why each shot was or wasn't clear.
How often#
Every time, to start with. Three rules narrow it down, and they combine:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Chance | how likely it is to play when it could, as a percentage |
| Cooldown | not again until this long after the last one, in seconds of real time |
| The Last Foe | the fight's last foe, as Set Last Foe names them: Like Any Other, Always, whatever the chance and cooldown, or Only The Last Foe |
So a finisher with a 20% chance and The Last Foe on Always plays now and then through a fight, and every time on the last one standing.
Multiplayer#
Plays On says whose screens a shot plays on in a networked game. The Attacker's Screen Only, the default, plays it for the attacker (a kill cam's shooter) and nobody else, and doesn't slow time, since in a networked game time is everyone's. Every Screen plays it for every player and slows the world for everyone, as the server keeps it. Played alone, a shot is always yours.
In Sequencer#
A shot is a Level Sequence with a camera and a camera cut, plus Blendable's own tracks: slow motion and hit-stop, focus and lens, letterbox bars, shot changes like a whip pan or a flash cut, framing on the people in it, shakes, and Blendable FX effects. Blendshot tracks goes through them.