How to copy values from Main Camera to vCam?

I do my workflow a little differently. The important thing to remember here is that until a VCam is constrained by a Follow or Look At, it's really just a GameObject and can move around like any GameObject.

Also note that I have keyboard shortcuts assigned to "Create Virtual Camera", "GameObject > Align with View", and "GameObject > Align View To Selected". This gives me instant keyboard access to everything I need to work quickly on a scene.

1. In Scene View, navigate to the view you want.
2. Create a new VCam. The Camera will align itself to this newly created Vcam exactly where your Scene View is.
3. If I'm not quite on target, I'll navigate in the Scene View, then GameObject > Move To View to put the VCam (and therefore the Camera) exactly where I want.
4. Sometimes I want to make tweaks on a VCam using the Scene gizmos. When that happens, I navigate away from the VCam, then make my tweaks. If I want to get back to the VCam's perspective, I choose GameObject > Align View To Selected (you can see why the keyboard shortcuts are so handy).
5. Rinse and repeat.

Essentially, I'm just creating a lot of VCam "bookmarks". Whichever VCam has highest priority will take control of the camera. Then, in my game or movie, I set the camera priority or use Timeline to indicate which VCam the camera should obey at any given moment.

Hope that helps!

 

What you're describing really isn't how how Cinemachine works (it's kind of the opposite). The whole point of constraining is to limit the places a camera can be and the direction the camera can look. So even if there were a control to copy all data from the Camera to the VCam, the constraints would instantly override that action.

This is conceivable, but it's also neither easy to implement nor guaranteed to deliver the result you expect. There are a lot of inter-operating controls in Cinemachine to get the behavior you want. So simply moving/rotating the camera doesn't tell us, for example, what kind of framing you want, or precisely how the camera should act as the target(s) move.

We're certainly aware that Cinemachine is better in the power-of-the-tool department than in the area of ease-of-use. We're looking at ways to improve how the UI informs you of what you can and cannot do. This will likely include some scene view/game view handles to make what you're trying to do easier.

 

If you want a static vcam whose position and rotation you set manually, that's easy. Navigate the scene view camera the way you want it, then create a vcam. It will have the same position and rotation as the scene view. If you want to reposition an existing vcam, navigate the scene view camera, then select your vcam and press ctrl+shift+F. There are also a couple of menu entries in the vcam inspector:



Set the Aim and Body settings of the vcam to Do Nothing. That will eliminate the warnings and turn off all procedural tracking. Setting the LookAt and Follow targets to nothing will also turn off procedural tracking.

Without procedural tracking, you can adjust the position and rotation of the vcam directly and simply, just as you would a normal camera.

You haven't mentioned what the "Body" and "Aim" settings of your vcam are. That would help us understand what you're trying to do. For now, I'll assume that you're using the default Transposer and Composer.

If you give the vcam a Follow target and a Body setting other than Do Nothing, you're asking it to position itself in relation to a Follow target, and to keep following it, no matter how that target moves. In this case, you're relinquishing direct control of the camera's position and instead are adopting indirect control: you have to tell the vcam what to follow and how to follow it. The "what" is the Follow target, and the "how" is the follow offset.



With this camera setting, you no longer can control the vcam's position directly. If you try to change the transform, the vcam won't allow it because it's in conflict with the instructions you've given it.

However, it is possible to drag the transform gizmo in the scene view to adjust the position. The vcam will interpret that as a refinement of the follow offset, and the change will be applied to the follow offset:



The same logic applies to the LookAt target and the Aim section of the vcam. You don't have to give the vcam a LookAt target, but if you do, you're telling it to look at that thing. That means: rotate the camera so that thing is in the center of the screen, and keep looking at it no matter where that thing goes. If you don't want to look directly at that thing's center, then you set the Tracked Object Offset to indicate the point of interest that you actually want to look at. "Look at" by default means: "put that point in the center of the screen".



Once you've established the point of interest, you may choose not to put it in the center of the screen. Similar to situation with position, you can't just directly rotate the vcam. You have to tell it where on the screen to put the point of interest. You do that with the Screen X and Screen Y settings in the Aim section of the inspector. Unfortunately there is no scene view shortcut for this, because if you tried to rotate the vcam, it wouldn't know whether you want to change the ScreenX/Y or the Tracked Object Offset.

It's hard to tell from your post whether you want the vcams to continually track your targets, or whether you're just using CM as a convenience to set up non-tracking vcams. In the latter case, you can assign a LookAt target to initially look somewhere, then immediately remove the LookAt target, allowing you to manually adjust the rotation. In that case, the camera will return to manual control and won't track the target. Maybe that's what you want.

 

@el_Guero What Body and Aim components do you have on the vcam?

 

In the Framing Transposer vcam, why do you need the "Same as Follow Target" in the aim? If you put "Do Nothing" in the aim, then you can freely control the angle using the vcam's transform, because the vcam won't be procedurally controlling it. You won't need Recomposer. In that case, orbiting is as simple as changing the vcam's Y rotation.

What kind of movement are you trying to get with the Transposer + Same as Follow Target vcam?

 

Well, the SameAsFollowTarget aim is very restrictive - it locks the vcam's Forward axis, and doesn't leave any room for adjustment. It might be interesting to let go of that one. Transposer + Composer might give you more flexibility. You can adjust Composer's screen X/Y directly in the Game View by dragging the little yellow dot. Set the Binding Mode to LockToTargetWithWorldUp for the first vcam, and WorldSpace for the second.