Manual zoom
Letting the player zoom: the arm in and out like a gameplay camera, or the lens like a scope, smoothly, along a curve of your own or in set stages that snap or ease. On any Rig and any fixed camera.
Every Rig and every fixed camera has a Manual Zoom, off until you turn it on. With it on, the player zooms that camera: the mouse wheel, zoom buttons on a pad, or your own Blueprint. The Isometric and Top Down Rigs ship with it on, smoothed, on the arm; the rest are yours to switch on where you want it.
Turning it on#
- On the Rig, open The Shot and tick Manual Zoom. On a fixed camera it's in the Feel band.
- On the camera preset, set the Zoom Action to an axis such as the mouse wheel, and if you like a Zoom In Action and a Zoom Out Action for buttons.
- Play. Only a Rig or a fixed camera with Manual Zoom on answers the zoom; the rest ignore it.
From Blueprint, the follow camera has Zoom In, Zoom Out, Add Zoom Input, Set Zoom and Reset Zoom, and Get Zoom and Can Zoom to read it.
What it zooms#
Zoom By picks the Arm Length, bringing the camera in and out along its arm the way a third-person camera does, or the Field Of View, narrowing the lens from where the camera is, the way a scope or binoculars do. A fixed camera always zooms its lens: it stays where you placed it.
The zoom is a magnification. Widest is how far out it goes, below 1 for further out than the camera's own arm or lens; Closest is how far in. At 2x an arm is half its length, and a lens shows what a lens of half the width would.
How it answers#
Raw.
Each turn of the wheel zooms at once, by Each Step.
Smoothed.
Each turn says where it's going, and it glides there over Glide Time.
Along A Curve.
The wheel moves along a Curve of your own from Widest to Closest, gliding, so the zoom can be slow near one end and quick near the other.
Stages.
Set magnifications in Stages, stepped up and down: 1x, 2x and 4x for a sight, say.
Stages, Looping.
The same, stepped up in order and round from the last back to the first, for one button.
Between stages it Eases over Ease Time on an Ease Curve of your own, or Snaps. A snap can play a Blendable FX effect as it goes, set in Snap Effect: an impact over the snap, or with Snap Under A Transition a transition it snaps under, so the change of magnification happens behind a cover.
Walls and changes of shot#
A zoomed arm keeps the length the player chose against everything else that changes an arm, so a pitch that pulls the camera in or a two-shot that wants more room doesn't fight it. When a wall pulls the camera in, After A Wall decides what happens once it's clear: Spring Back Out to the zoom, or Stay In, so the zoom comes in with the wall and stays there until the player zooms out.
Each Rig keeps its own zoom settings, so aiming, a lock-on and the follow camera can each zoom their own way, or not at all. From the start of a blend between Rigs the wheel answers the Rig the shot is going to, and what each zoom does to the shot eases over the blend, the one being left fading out as the new one comes in, so nothing jumps as they change over. Starts At 1x, on by default, puts the zoom back to 1x whenever that Rig or camera takes the shot; off, it keeps the magnification the camera had. Reverse The Wheel turns the wheel round for players who'd rather roll it towards them to zoom in.
Where next#
- Rig settings: every Manual Zoom setting, with what it starts at.
- Fixed camera settings: the fixed camera's.