Shot Manager

Tab: Shot Manager — Shot list & review · Plugin: Cinematic Lab

The production side of the cockpit: what shots exist, what state each is in, who is on it, what it looked like, and which take is the pick.

The Shot Manager tab: shot list with status, artist and version, and the per-shot Look controls.

The shot list

Built from the active Level Sequence in Sequencer. The header reads Sequence: <name>; with nothing open it says “(no Level Sequence open in Sequencer)” rather than showing an empty list with no explanation.

Refresh re-scans. Each row carries duration and version (<n>s · v<version>), an editable artist field, and a status. Double-click a shot row and the Sequencer playhead jumps to that shot’s start.

Re-time multiplier + Apply scales all shot durations by the multiplier, anchored at the first shot’s start.

The shot scanner reads both the Cinematic Shot track and the Camera Cut track, so sequences authored either way are handled identically. That dual-track scan is also what the NLE Bridge export reuses.

Marking two camera cuts as Approved and Blocking in the shot list.

Per-shot Look State

The tab’s central idea: a shot remembers how it looked, and can be put back.

Action	What it does
Capture Look to Shot	Store the scene’s current local lights into the selected shot
Restore Look	Replace the scene’s current local lights with the shot’s captured lighting

Directional and Sky lights are left untouched, deliberately. Restoring a shot’s look never destroys the level’s base lighting rig — that asymmetry is the design, not an oversight.

A captured Look holds more than lights:

• Lighting. Every local light (Point / Spot / Rect) with its full authored state: transform,. intensity and intensity units, colour, temperature flag and value, attenuation radius, cone angles, source width and height, mobility, shadow casting.
• Style. The scene-wide Mirage NPR look, so a stylised treatment and the lighting that flatters. it travel together.
• Camera. The live camera, so a restore can put the shot back on its framing.
• Cast. Actors placed through Place in Shot (below).

Restore runs inside a single transaction: an entire look swap is one Ctrl+Z.

A shot only counts as having a Look if it carries lights, a style or a live camera — a stricter test than “the struct exists”, so an empty capture cannot masquerade as a saved look.

A/B compare

Action	What it does
Stash Live Look (B)	Capture the current scene as the B snapshot
Toggle A/B	Flip the live scene between the shot’s stored look (A) and the stash (B)
Diff A/B	List what actually changed between them

Diff is the one that saves arguments — it prints the differences rather than leaving you to spot them by eye.

Replay Lab: takes

Re-shoot Selected Actor records the selected viewport actor’s performance into a new take for this shot, through Take Recorder. Stop ends the recording.

The panel is explicit about what it needs: select an actor in the viewport first, and the Take Recorder plugin must be available — it says “Take Recorder plugin unavailable” rather than failing silently.

Circled takes

Each take can be circled as the pick. The tooltip states the consequence: “Circle this take as the pick (exports as an OTIO marker).”

That is not decoration. A circled take becomes a green OTIO Marker.2 on the clip’s marked range in the NLE Bridge export, named "<take> (<rating>/5)" — so the director’s judgement arrives in the editor as native markers rather than as a separate document.

Compare A/B (takes)

Opens a wipe compare of the shot’s two most recent rendered or clip takes, preferring circled ones. Stills only — the panel says so. It needs two takes and tells you when there are not enough.

Shot entries with a recorded take.

Cast

Place in Shot spawns a chosen asset — skeletal mesh, prop or actor blueprint — then:

1. Ground-snaps it and faces it toward the viewport,.
2. Bakes it as a spawnable in this shot’s sequence,.
3. Records it in the shot’s Look.

Remove takes a cast entry out of the shot’s Look. It does not delete the spawned preview actor — the panel says so plainly: “The spawned preview actor stays in the level — delete it there if unwanted.”

Hand-off to Render

Action	What it does
Render this shot only	Stash the selected shot for the Render tab to pick up
Open Render Folder	Open the output folder of this shot’s most recent render

The render side then offers Render Pending Shot with its Look, which restores the captured Look State — lighting, Mirage style and virtual camera — before rendering that shot alone.

Each row shows its render history: Last render: v<version> - <status> - <date>, or “Not yet rendered”.

Notes

• Look capture is local-lights-only by design. If a shot’s mood depends on the directional or sky light, that is level state, not shot state, and Cinematic Lab will not stomp it.
• Restore is one undo. The whole swap — lights removed, lights rebuilt, style and camera restored — is a single transaction.
• “Render this shot only” clears the queue. The Render tab’s per-shot render says so on the button; it is not a silent side effect.