Camera

Tab: Camera — Lens & framing · Plugin: Cinematic Lab

The largest tab in the cockpit. Everything about what the camera is and where it points.

The Camera tab: camera tree on the left, body and lens presets, filmback, focal-length buttons, focus and lookat on the right.

The camera tree

The left column lists every camera in the level, organised into folders you create.

Button	What it does
+ Camera	Spawn a new CineCamera at the current viewport position
+ Folder	Create a top-level folder
+ Rail	Spawn a Camera Rig Rail at the viewport
+ Crane	Spawn a Camera Rig Crane at the viewport
Pilot	Lock the active viewport to the selected camera — toggles to Eject
Refresh	Re-scan the level for cameras

Double-click a row to focus it in the viewport. Right-click for the rest: New Subfolder, Rename, Delete Folder (children move up one level rather than being destroyed), Move to Folder, (Ungroup) and Focus in Viewport.

Piloting a camera from the tree.

Body and lens presets

Two dropdowns — Body and Lens — backed by preset assets in the project.

• Spawn From Preset creates a new CineCamera with that body and lens applied.
• Apply To Selected Camera applies them to the camera selected in the tree.
• ↻ re-scans the project for preset assets.

If both dropdowns are empty, the panel tells you to Run Install Sample Presets on the launcher header — that is the fix, not a bug.

A camera spawned from a body + lens preset, with its filmback and focal length resolved.

Filmback and lens

Control	Notes
Filmback	Sensor preset; the readout shows width × height mm (aspect:1)
Focal Length	Fifteen one-click buttons — 14, 18, 21, 25, 32, 35, 40, 50, 65, 75, 85, 100, 135, 150, 200 mm
Aperture (f-stop)	Depth-of-field aperture
Focus Distance (cm)	Manual focus distance
Focus Mode	Manual or Tracking
Track focus on…	Pick an actor to track; ↻ re-scans the level for trackable actors
Anamorphic Squeeze	1.0 = spherical; 1.33 / 1.5 / 2.0 = anamorphic

Choosing a 65 mm focal length from the lens buttons for a tighter frame.

The resulting shot: the longer lens and set focus distance compress the still life.

Lookat and shot presets

Lookat (one-shot) picks a target actor and Snap rotates the camera to face it. ΔX / ΔY / ΔZ offset the aim point, and Allow Roll decides whether the snap is permitted to roll the camera.

With a target picked, Shot Presets frames it in one click:

Wide · Medium · Close-up · Extreme CU · Dutch · OTS, plus the angle set Front · Front-L · Front-R · Left · Right.

A shot preset applied to a target actor.

Composition overlays

Drawn through UDebugDrawService, so they appear in the active level viewport during editing and during Sequencer playback — not only in a preview window.

• Rule of Thirds
• Golden Ratio
• Center Crosshair
• Aspect Matte (Letterbox) with an aspect picker: 16:9 (HD), 2.39:1 (Cinemascope), 1.85:1 (Theatrical), 21:9 (UltraWide), 1:1 (Square), 9:16 (Vertical), or a custom ratio
• Action-Safe (90%) and Title-Safe (80%)
• Filmback Frame
• Luma Histogram

DP Assist

Two exposure and focus aids, the same ones a monitor on set would give you:

• Focus Peaking. Highlights in-focus edges.
• Zebras (exposure). Striping over blown highlights.

Operator (Handheld)

Adds believable hand-held motion to a piloted camera.

Control	What it does
Profile	Which handheld profile to use
Intensity	How strong the motion is
Add to Piloted Camera	Attach the operator to the camera you are piloting
Impulse	Fire a one-off shove — a bump, a footfall
Install 4 Profiles	Create the four sample operator profiles if the project has none

Move: dolly and crane

Dolly track

+ Dolly Track spawns an EQLabs Dolly Track at the viewport with three seed points to drag into shape.

1. Attach Camera to Dolly parents the piloted (or selected) CineCamera to the carriage. Until you do this, the Preview slider and the world-mode bake have nothing to drive — the panel says so rather than silently doing nothing.
2. Aim sets how the camera is oriented while the carriage travels: Keep Rig Rotation, Look At Target, or Follow Tangent. Aim = Selected sets the Look At Target to the actor selected in the level.
3. Preview scrubs the carriage live and writes no keys.
4. Bake Move → Sequencer samples the motion profile at the display rate and writes keys — either the camera’s world transform, or Alpha keys only (non-destructive) on the dolly itself. Duration (s) sets the length.

Baking requires an open Level Sequence; without one the panel reports “nothing baked — open a Level Sequence first” instead of appearing to succeed.

Crane

Author Crane Move spawns a Camera Rig Crane and keys ArmLength, Pitch and Yaw across the duration. It also needs an open Level Sequence.

Two-key moves

Push In (0.5x) and Pull Out (2x) write two eased keys moving the piloted camera to half — or twice — its current distance from the selected subject. Both need a piloted or selected CineCamera, a selected subject, and an open Level Sequence; each missing piece gets its own message.

Dolly and crane rigs spawned in the level.

Bookmarks

Save snapshots the selected camera’s transform and lens under a name. Apply restores it, Delete removes it. Useful for parking a framing you want back later without committing it to a shot.

A saved camera bookmark.

Notes

• Actions state their prerequisites. Attach, Aim, Bake, Push/Pull and Author Crane each refuse with a specific message naming what is missing. A refusal here is the tool telling you the fix.
• Preview never writes keys. The dolly Preview slider is scrub-only; keys appear when you explicitly bake.
• Overlays are viewport-drawn, not render-baked. They help you frame; they do not appear in a Movie Render Queue output. For burned-in metadata on rendered frames use the Render tab’s burn-ins.