Question about Timeline Pausing and Virtual Camera Priority

Hi all,

In my current setup, there are several instances where we manually pause the timeline using an outside custom TimelineManager object. Usually we do this to wait for a character to move to a specific spot or wait until a certain input has been received or for dialogue to finish, etc.

However, I've noticed that when we call Timeline.Pause() (or whatever the function's called), Cinemachine automatically selects the camera with the highest priority to view the scene through. In order to prevent this behavior, we've taken to using Activation Tracks to manually disable/activate cameras. This is quite cumbersome and requires a lot of properly synced up tracks (many of which are often spatially separated in the inspector)--for instance, we have to have Cinemachine track itself, then any Animation tracks that drive the camera (if applicable) and finally, an Activation Track to turn on/off the camera.

In other words, is there an easy way to hook into Cinemachine--I imagine the brain receives some sort of OnTimelinePause event or something of the sort? Essentially, we'd like for Cinemachine to keep the focus on whatever camera was 'live' when the Timeline was paused and not do any camera switches at all when the timeline is paused.

Or perhaps I'm wrong about all of this and doing something incorrectly--feel free to correct me if so! Thanks again for the awesome tools!

 

@Gregoryl,

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work as the PlayableDirector doesn't seem to acknowledge the update change at runtime (IE, the timeline continues scrubbing through even though the mode shows "Manual" in the Inspector).

It does, however, acknowledge it if I set it in the Inspector beforehand. So that got me thinking, why not just always use Manual and pass deltaTime in via my TimelineManager's Update function? This approach should work, but unfortunately, I cannot find any documentation about the PlayerController.Tick() as alluded to here: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Playables.DirectorUpdateMode.Manual.html.

Maybe this is just named something differently? Or perhaps it really is inaccessible at the moment--either way, some clarification would be much appreciated! Thanks again.

 

@Gregoryl,

Sorry to blow up this thread, but I also attempted to increment the ActiveDirector's 'time' value in my Update loop, but with the playmode set to Manual, it doesn't seem to be acknowledging this either, even though I can see the time value change in the inspector and I can see the timeline scrubbing as well, but it isn't executing any of the tracks it comes across.

 

@seant_unity,

Thanks for the response! I actually did something pretty hacky--not super proud of it, but let's be honest, I've done worse As long as I know I'm only doing cuts, I just hook into the CinemachineMixerClip and force whatever camera is coming up to be set as the "SoloCamera." Obviously not a perfect or final solution, but for now, it gets the job done and prevents camera switching while the timeline is paused.

 

Hello!
Question, I have been having the same issue, If I pause the timeline with
director.playableGraph.GetRootPlayable(0).SetSpeed(0); all the animations pause too, and it looks very jarring, so I was trying to find the current position of the active Cinemachine virtual camera (or the blend position), to set the Released camera to that transform, but I can't even find where these cameras are accessible, and though I got all cameras from the CinemachineCore, I don't know know which camera is currently live either, as the Cinemachine brain shows it in editor but doesn't expose it.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to prevent all the switching?
Thanks so much.

 

Sorry, Maybe I was not very clear.

So, I have a simple cutscene text dialogue, where the cinemachine camera is paused and dialogue bubbles come up, and wait for a controller prompt to continue.
The timeline and virtual cameras play normally until with an activation track I enable some game objects that OnEnable() pause the game and advance the dialogue.

This works nicely, because looping animations, such as Idles and generic dialogue continue, while the camera is stopped. which is the reason why director.playableGraph.GetRootPlayable(0).SetSpeed(0); is OK, but not ideal.

Problem is (and seemingly random), that if I call Pause() instead on my playable director. The camera returns to some other virtual camera position on the scene. when I resume, it returns to the correct position.

No other scripts are changing my mainCamera's position, so I don't understand why this would be happening.

I'm not sure if that explains my problem a little clearer.

Thanks.

 

When you pause the timeline, it stops forcing its virtual camera to be active. And then the last active virtual camera becomes the active one.

- Double check the priority setting on all your virtual cameras
- Timeline will "force on" a virtual camera, even if it is not active, even if it has lower priority, even if the vcam gameobject isn't even enabled.

 

Right, yeah that's what I was noticing.
So, Is there any way in which I can Get the latest "LIVE" camera, and set it's priority "highest", so that it always respect the last section played? Not particularly clean, but that should work, right?

Thanks!

 

Sorry to chime in here... while I do see what @Gregoryl is saying, I ran into the exact same problem. Throw in time constraints, blah blah blah--well, you see where I'm going with this. This is, by no means, a permanent fix to the problem, but this is what I'm doing to always focus on a single camera. This code lives in the CinemachineMixer.cs--the last line was there already, for reference as to where you need to insert this:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. if(camA != null && CinemachineBrain.SoloCamera != camA)
3. {
4.      if (mBrain.m_DefaultBlend.m_Style == CinemachineBlendDefinition.Style.Cut)
5.      {
6.           CinemachineBrain.SoloCamera = camA;
7.      }
8. }
9.  
10. // Override the Cinemachine brain with our results
11. mBrainOverrideId = mBrain.SetCameraOverride(mBrainOverrideId, camB, camA, camWeight, deltaTime);

And again... I do see what you're saying, but I would strongly suggest adding this sort of behavior to the CinemachineBrain as it can be incredibly frustrating trying to selectively disable/enable cameras, especially when there are a bunch of them. And honestly, when you're just doing straight cuts and not interested in whether or not a camera can 'get' a good shot or any kind of blending behavior, I see no reason to have to fiddle with the priority system. For instance, when a Timeline is sufficiently complicated, you really can't even see all of the tracks at once. Couple that with some weird snapping mechanisms (I understand that Timeline is still in its infancy) and it can be very time-intensive trying to make sure certain cameras do what is needed using Activation tracks and whatnot. Having a bunch of activation tracks just adds more clutter.

 

Hey @Gregoryl, that is correct! We're using a different Camera system for our non-cutscene (IE, timeline) gameplay. So the only time Cinemachine cameras come into play is during our cutscenes/timelines.

And don't get me wrong, I totally understand why you guys set it up the way you did, it's a really powerful and versatile system, but for our particular use-case, we just need one camera active all the time. Basically, once the timeline is over, we revert to our standard, already implemented camera system. But while using the Timeline, basically, our use case would be covered if Timeline didn't 'release' its override when explicitly paused.

 

Thank you, @Gregoryl. I suspected there was probably a better, less hacky way to do what I needed.

 

Be aware that setting the speed to 0/1 multiple times will eventually cause audio playback of audiotracks in the timeline to stop working. (Unity 2018.1b05)

In an attempt to work around this i tried using timeScale = 0 and AudioListener.pause = true, but Timeline AudioTracks use some different method for audio playback it seems.

@seant_unity do you have any tips on how we can manipulate playback of an AudioTrack in Timeline?

 

Has it changed the way it works? (i'm using 2022.3.6f1)
Pause() doesn't seem to release the Cinemachine track.

for example i have two virtual Camera
Cam1 : Priority 10 / SetActive True
Cam2 : Priority 100 / SetActive True
In Timeline, Cam1 is playing

Only Cam1 plays because the timeline overrides the priority.

but
If i Pause the Timeline in the middle,
(manual way or using PlayableDirector.Pause() or ....SetSpeed(0))
Still it works as Cam1

I want to run Cam2 while the Timeline is paused,
so i try
Cam2.MoveToTopOfPrioritySubqueue();
SetActive true -> false -> true
but it still behaves as Cam1.

I was expecting to be able to set the priority of the cinemachine via script,
since the ProcessFrame is not evaluated when the timeline is paused.
Is there something wrong with my understanding or testing?


My purpose in making these attempts is simple.
Pause in the middle of a timeline cutscene.
After doing something uncontrolled with the timeline,
(via script, using different VCams)
play the paused timeline again.

If there's a better way to do it, I'd love to hear about it