cinemachine freelook prefabs seem to become corrupted

Cinemachine freelook cameras seem to have alot of trouble keeping their settings when saved as prefabs. I cant exactly figure out what corrupts their data. But the Top Rig, Middle Rig, Bottom Rig settings seem to get corrupted and reset every now and then. I can tell when this happens too as the arrow next to them disappears



when I select one of the corrupted rigs


i see this appear in the object heirarchy




the ONLY way to keep them for sure is to save via unity collaborate and constantly revert them after working in the project ... man.. what a nightmare

 

2018.1.0f1

 

hehe its slowly corrupting them more and more



so i'm not sure. I do have some editor scripts that are running update methods and I do have an

[InitializeOnLoad]

that automagically spawns some gameobjects and prefabs into the scenes (but not the cameras).

I'm not sure but i'll keep testing and see if i can find a pattern

 

luckily collaborate's revert is saving me

 

I have a very similar, if not the same, problem. I have created a prefab with cinemachinefreelook on it, and it seems that whenever I try to change settings on that prefab, it spawns those 3 rigs in the scene, tries to parent them to the prefab, which fails, and then throws this nullreferenceException.

 

hurrah! im not crazy!

 

I'm using unity 2018.1.0 and Cinemachine 2.1.13, but I just tried to reproduce it myself, and now it doesn't happen for me either.
It seems like the problem was in creating the prefab though. When I tried creating new prefabs this time, the 3 child rigs were created underneath the prefab. That didn't happen with the prefab that was broken. That one was just a single object, which I assume is why it kept trying to create the missing rigs.

 

Ok here's how I think you repro this. Make a cinemachine prefab out of a free look. Instantiate it at runtime. Make changes to it. Drag that to make a new prefab on disc. Then drag the camera ontop of the original prefab to replace its settings.

Now you'll start to see TopRig, MiddleRig, and BottomRig appear in the heirarchy of the game. This means your F***ED. Cinemachine is now destroying your cameras.

Restart Unity and you'll be greeted with this:



Not having the arrows next to your camera is BAD NEWS.

When you run the game cinemachine will make have erased all your rig settings and there's no way to get them back outside of version control.


Now this could ALLLLL be avoided if you could actually copy the rig settings during runtime and paste them onto the prefab on disc like every other object in unity. I know you'd mentioned this was working but it does not sadly.

 

Yes! Yhat's exactly what I'm seeing.

So on my machine using two different versions of cinemachine - the package manager one, AND a beta I was sent of a newer (sexier) version, the Paste Component Values only copies values into that top section, not to any of the rigs. Basically the gear produces this result:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/copying-properties-from-play-mode-onto-prefabs.532085/

I'm really sorry this has been so hard to track down. Do you think the behavior repro-'d above is fixable?

 

heres when you know its bad

 

notice there are no rigs now in the prefab:

 

Yeah I've been replacing just to get around the copy paste issue. So it sounds like with the next update this wont even be an issue! I'm super happy you could see that on your end. Cant wait for the new Update! Any ETA on that?

Great work Gregoryl !

 

This is still suuuuper painful. Any chance this update is coming soon?

 

Any news on this? It's still destroying my work constantly... would LOVE a fix

 

Yeah I really wish you could use the gear icon to copy settings between Cinemachine free look cameras but again it never fills in any of the composer values. It'll only take from the top with field of view etc.

I'm using 2.2.7

When the corruption occurs on the camera prefabs it always throws an error about "repainting" something. I feel really bad because I know you've been working on this and I keep hearing about this being patched but It really continues to happen. I no longer drag a prefab from the hierarchy to copy the settings (despite that being the only method that works) because I do get why that would cause the corruption. I'm currently working on abstracting cinemachine free look settings into a scriptable object per camera because it's the only way to tweak the values while the game is running (since my cameras are instantiated).

I guess this is the end of the road if its officially been "fixed". You've definitely done a lot putting up with my complaints and maybe someone out there will get these new fixes and it'll work perfectly. Perhaps since i corrupted things they are broken permanently now *shrug. Hopefully the game gets to a place soon where I could package it up and send it to you so you could see the repro case. I just feel like your never gonna want to inherit my 30k codebase to try and solve a single bug.

either way I'm just going to put as many of the CM settings into scriptable objects ... that seems to be my only hope.

one thing I cant figure out how to access via script is the aim offset values for the orbits


this is how i adjust the radius and the screen X, Y. I'm just not sure the syntax to adjust the aim offset on the 3 different rigs ?

Code (CSharp):

1.             CinemachineFreeLook cam = camera.gameObject.GetComponent<CinemachineFreeLook>();          
2.  
3.             for (int i =0; i < 3; i++){
4.                     CinemachineComposer composer = camera.GetComponent<CinemachineFreeLook>().GetRig(i).GetCinemachineComponent<CinemachineComposer>() as CinemachineComposer;
5.                     if ( cameraStateAsset.followTeamCenter == true){
6.                         cam.m_Orbits[i].m_Radius = Mathf.Clamp(characterController.team.teamRadius * cameraStateAsset.teamRadiusBias, cameraStateAsset.teamRadiusMin, cameraStateAsset.teamRadiusMax);
7.                     }
8.  
9.                     if ( cameraStateAsset.radiusControlsYoffset == true){
10.                         float yoffset = Map(cameraStateAsset.yoffsetMin, cameraStateAsset.yoffsetMax, cameraStateAsset.fovDistanceMin,cameraStateAsset.fovDistanceMax, characterController.team.teamRadius);
11.                         composer.m_ScreenY = yoffset;
12.                         composer.m_ScreenX = cameraStateAsset.xoffset;
13.                     }
14.             }

 

That's phenomenal! I'd been hoping things would go that way because often I really do keep most of the settings the same.

I'm not too keen yet on using experimental features as i'm trying to keep things stable but Its just super cool to know that's coming.

Thanks for the m_TrackedObjectOffset callout. Gonna put that in now!

 

This just happened to me now, using Unity 2019.1.10f. How do I fix it and get my settings back?

 

I am having this issue with Cinemachine V2.6.2 and Unity 2019.3.15f1

 

Hi there, I also experienced the exact issue when dragging freelook instance onto a freelook prefab.
Cinemachine V2.6.1, Unity 2019.3.9f1

Update: I tried using the "Apply" button. Same issue occur .
Luckily I have version control.......

 

Yes and Yes in 2.7.2

 

yeah, for last year or so i experience same stuff on different versions of unity and cinemachine (use latest) when working with cinemachine virtual camera as prefab. freelook loses it's rig info and create those three rigs outside it in scene. it's doesn't happen all the time, but randomly happens here and there while working with it, i can't notice any real dependency between my actions and when it happens. something wrong with prefab cinemachine workflow i assume

 

lost all rig info in freelook working with prefab today again (happens 50/50)
1. have three cameras under prefab (prefab instance in scene)
2. change parameters in those cameras (in prefab instance in scene)
3. override apply them to prefab
4. check other scene with this prefab instance or close/open unity

made changes on all three cameras and they all lost rig stuff (the chang was "inherit position" tickbox)

 

Same issue here cinemachine 2.6.4 unity version 2020.3.3f1

 

Cool, big thanks!

 

I'm experiencing randomly orphaned rigs in 2021.1.10f1. I don't know if I'm causing this or if it's related to this issue, it's very random?

Was this issue resolved?

edit: Maybe not so random.. this seems to occur when working with Cinemachine FreeLook prefabs.

edit2 (edit3: I'm not able to reproduce behavior with the following steps, but these were the actions I took when it happened once. There must be something else I did?):

1) Create a main camera and a Cinemachine FreeLook camera.
2) Drag these into a folder to create prefabs.
3) Change settings in your FreeLock camera in the scene Hierarchy.
4) Drag the Cinemachine FreeLook scene camera onto the prefab from step 2
5) Notice that BottomRig, MiddleRig, and TopRig now exist in the Scene Hierarchy.

 

Version 2.7.4, I've just switched to com.unity.cinemachine@2.8.0-pre.1, and will let you know if it occurs again. It seems to be very fairly rare behavior, as far as I can tell.

 

Hello again, I'm currently in version 2021.2.0b2 (Cinemachine 2.8.0-pre.1) and this issue seems to still be happening.

The preceding action is to: drag and drop a Cinemachine Freelook Prefab (from the scene Hierarchy) onto it's original Prefab (in the Project folder) as a way to update Cinemachine settings.

A simple Ctrl+Z and try again is a very simple workaround. However, should the user not notice the dropped rigs, this will result in lost work.

 

Unfortunately it's not reproducible for me either, but if I figure out more, I will submit a repo for testing.

 

+1
Unity 2020.3.30
Cinemachine 2.6.11

Got a nice setup and suddenly everything was totally weird.
Null ref log messages as mentioned by the others.
Wanted to check the rig config on the prefab instance and was not able to find the Top/Middle/Bottom rig settings.
Thought I go cracy, they've been there...
Then I found them as mentioned by the others in the hierarchy of the scene.

Got a simple Prefab with a CinemachineFreelook as first child. Setting y-axis/x-axis properties and orbit height/radius via script from the root object. Not accessing the rig components themself.

Happend only once yet. Will keep my eyes open and see if I can reproduce.

 

Running into this problem myself now. I have FreelookCam prefab that when I try to save overrides, the prefab corrupts. Seems to happen every time. Seemingly though, if I unpack the prefab and save it as an entirely new prefab, it works. I haven't tried to repro in a fresh project but its happening consistently in my current project

 

Having this same problem when I instantiate a prefab of my virtual camera.

Unity 2020.3.25f1
Cinemachine Version: 2.6.11

 

I can't find a fix for this cinemachine prefab corruption. It seems to happen after updating the package. Removing and intalling the package doesn't fix. Someone knows if this corruption issue doesn't happen on 3.0.0?

 

This is very interesting news! I hadn't heard about a new major version for Cinemachine, I have a few questions since I recently updated a project I'm working on to 2022.2 on that uses a CinemachineFreeLook component for a 3rd person camera.

Obviously the exact release date will be up in the air, but do you have a sense of what Unity version V3 will be released with? Could it potentially be released sometime around or in the months following the 2022 LTS release?

Since it sounds like there'll be some major API changes I'm curious what the tradeoffs are in terms of upgrade effort vs the benefits of the new system. I have a facade class that wraps the various FreeLook members and methods that I need (mostly the axis values, bias, rig heights & radii, recentering times & delays, and very importantly world space rotations x-axis limits) and only have one prefab to update. In cases like these will there be functionally equivalent members and methods to update these kinds of things? What I'm asking here is less "can I update my project without any work" and more "will there be similar functionality from V2 that can be translated without a major rethink".

The fix for prefabs corruption sounds great! That'd make me much less paranoid about editing the prefab outside of prefab mode. What other kinds of fixes, improvements and features can we expect? Since you mention that 2022.2 will be the minimum required version will this integrate with the new Splines package that was released for Unity 2022? Looking around I also saw that in 2020 you brought up the possibility of using parts of the DOTS stack to improve performance. Is that work a part of this release, and if so would this release potentially make controlling cameras in DOTS projects easier? And I know there are things you can't talk about before release, but are there any fun new features you're excited for that you can talk about?

Looking forward to the new release!


EDIT: turns out there's a forum post for it: https://forum.unity.com/threads/announcing-cinemachine-3-0.1361713/ In short, yes native splines are used now, there's a very nice upgrade guide that looks promising if I update to Unity 2023, V3 won't play nice with DOTS, and the pre-release will be for 2023.1 and full release for 2023.2. All around exciting stuff!