Held angles
A Rig can hold its own angle, for top-down, isometric and side-on games. The camera keeps its pitch and its heading, the stick moves the character across the screen, and the view only turns when you ask it to.
Most Rigs follow the player's aim: the mouse and the look stick turn the camera. A Rig with Hold The Angle owns its rotation instead. It looks down at its own pitch and faces its own heading, and the mouse and the look stick stop turning it. That's the camera for a top-down shooter, an isometric action RPG or a side-scroller.
Three shipped styles hold their angle: Top Down, Isometric and Side Scroller. Choosing a style has what each one looks like.
Holding an angle#
Tick Hold The Angle on a Rig, under The Shot:
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Pitch | how far down it looks: -90 is straight down, -50 a steep isometric view, 0 level |
| Faces | A direction in the world, or Wherever it was looking when this Rig took the shot |
| Facing | the direction in the world, in degrees. 0 looks along +X, 45 is the isometric diagonal, and -90 looks along -Y, so +X runs left to right across the screen |
Movement stays relative to the camera, so up on the stick is up on the screen whichever way the view faces. The player's aim is kept separately, at the Rig's Resting Pitch and facing the held heading, so anything that reads it, movement or an aim offset, sees a sensible direction rather than one pitched at the floor.
Turning the view#
Bind Rotate Camera, on the Follow Camera, to an input. On a held angle it's the only thing that turns the camera; on any other Rig it turns the view the way the look stick would.
| Mode | What Amount means |
|---|---|
| While held | degrees per second at full input, for a stick or a held key |
| Each press | degrees per press, eased over Spin Time. Quick presses add up, and a negative input turns the other way. 45 or 90 are the usual |
Set Camera Heading turns to face a direction in the world, easing there over Time. Get Camera Heading reads the way the camera faces, Is Holding Angle says whether it's mostly on a held Rig, and Recenter Camera turns a held angle back to its Rig's heading.
Between held and followed shots#
Holding the angle blends with the Rig rather than switching on and off. Change from a followed Rig to a held one and the view swings in from wherever the player was looking; change back and it hands over level, at Resting Pitch, still facing the same way. Nothing snaps.
Which way it faces after a change:
- A Rig facing A direction in the world takes that direction when it arrives from a followed shot.
- Between held Rigs facing the same way, a turn the player made is kept.
- A held Rig facing another way brings the camera round over the blend.
The shipped held Rigs take two seconds to come in, so craning from behind you to overhead never whips the view round.
Two things a side-on camera needs#
Vertical Follow (x), on a Rig's Pivot, is how quickly the camera follows height, as a share of Pivot Lag Speed. 1 follows height like everything else. Lower lets a jump rise without the camera bobbing up after it; Side Scroller uses 0.35.
Room ahead. Side Scroller leaves space in front of you with a composition shift on the angle between the view and where you're running, and Ease Direction Changes ticked on it. Without that, turning round at full speed would flip the space to the other side in one frame. With it, the space swings across the screen.
Making your own#
- 1
Make a Rig.
Right-click in the Content Browser, choose Miscellaneous → Data Asset, and pick Blendable Camera Rig.
- 2
Start from an archetype.
At the bottom of the panel, under The Whole Rig, set Start From Archetype to Top Down, Isometric or Side Scroller and click Apply Archetype.
- 3
Set the angle.
Change Pitch and Facing under Hold The Angle, then Arm Length and Field Of View for how much of the level you see. A long lens far back flattens the view towards a map; a wider lens closer in keeps some depth.
- 4
Use it.
Put it in a Camera Preset, or push it as a state, and bind Rotate Camera if players should turn it.
The archetypes leave collision off and carry no body or handheld motion, since neither reads from that far out. Hits still land. The numbers are good starting points worked out from the genre's usual framing, not finished tuning, so play with them.