Creating Camera Mode Volumes in UE5 Lyra tutorial : includes a static camera mode

[@stoneageprogrammer432]

Hi, Nance, just want to say I really appreciate what you do in Lyra and Unreal teaching. I've never seen anyone else do anything like what you are doing. I'm just now learning Lyra, and still new to unreal, so I really learn a lot from watching your videos, and I really appreciate your unique approach to everything. I hope you'll keep making videos, I'm watching them all, and thank you again for teaching. Have a great week.

[@Cpt.Tripps]

Great Lyra content, insta subscribed! Keep em coming!

[@stoneageprogrammer432]

Oh, if it helps to inspire future tutorial topics: I just started playing Pathfinder, an tabletop RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. Although I was earlier just going to make a FPS game out of lyra(not very original), now I'm getting more and more inspired to make a full fantasy game, with inventory, RPG stuff, different classes of characters (fighters, wizards, healers, rangers, etc), so I'm thinking of ways Lyra could do that kind of stuff. A lot of what you've already posted could make it easy.

[@smalllixin]

Subscribe must~ Helps a lot of understand the lyra arch.

[@ZooDinghy]

This is so cool!

[@MisakSamokatyan]

Thanks for your lesson! What about SpringArms? or does the cameraMode functionality surpass and replace the usual SpringArm?

[@nancedevdiaries]

I was also confused at first and looking for the spring arm! Looks like it replaces it. It also plays well with the camera modes to not have a sprint arm component, just the camera component. It does check for penetration (to not clip in walls and things with the camera trace) and has multiple points for that check which is superior to spring arm in my opinion. I haven't experimented/played with that trace, just the curves and camera modes which has been enough for me.

[@SillyG-cv3im]

Could you share the dev environment setting (key words is ok)? It's so confused for me...😵‍💫 And Does Rider linker support UE5.3?

[@hiagooliveira6510]

Hi @nancedevdiaries ! I'm exploring the idea of creating a new default camera mode for my little hobby game, in this case a top down view camera. In this tutorial as you can see, when you change the camera mode you still have the weapon targeting reticle showing at the dead center of this screen, this is because the game still has the mouse input captured. Have you had any success (or ever explored the idea) of getting back control of the mouse so you could for example from a top down perspective click somewhere on the ground and the character would move there? Cheers!

[@namrog84]

Any reason to not do something like adding an GameplayAbility that takes effect whenever in the volume, so that that leverages the GA system and thus AbilityCameraMode instead of adding a second VolumeCameraMode? And when you leave the volume, it removes the ability. Then you don't need to keep track as nearly as much stuff.

[@nancedevdiaries]

You definitely could, but then if you activate an ability like "aim down sights," while in a camera mode volume, that camera mode would be overriden and the camera mode volume would need to know when to reactivate the camera mode, unless you have some sort of camera mode stack. Having a distinction allows you more control over which camera mode is active and when (especially when you'll deal with overlapping camera mode volumes).

[@nancedevdiaries]

It would also feel odd to have that functionality as a character ability conceptually in general, since it's not really a character's ability but more something that happens to them (their local camera switching to a new mode/perspective/location).

[@namrog84]

@@nancedevdiaries Excellent points very true. I hadn't considered that! Thank you! 👍

[@yuweilin6306]

💖Wating for ai tutorial

[@aloevvvera857]

Hi, I am wondering how to setup a camera mode in which the camera follows a spline? Is the camera mode as an abstract object able to dynamically extract information from the world and update the view based on player location towards the spline? Thanks!

[@nancedevdiaries]

Sounds like a modified version of kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKKWeXSid9CWmcU&lc=UgxxLWWgffqnWpwtU_54AaABAg.9g9Izub6Qdd9gA00WCljNO. (Not sure if it linked well to the comment, but it's Macézar Alves's question for a 2.5D camera). For "update the view based on player location towards the spline" that would just be setting the rotation for the camera so it looks at the player pawn. The third person mode already does that sort of logic, a good example. As for the camera following a spline as in the location, that would be in View.Location in your cameraMode's update view function where you'd get the location along the spline and a certain 0-1 number for updating the camera along the spline. The rate your camera moved along the spline would be some variable. As for getting the spline actor itself from the CameraMode, that's an interesting point. You'd need to figure out where to store it and how to get it from the CameraMode. I guess you could store an actor reference in your GameState, then get it from your camera mode with World->GetGameState(). Or set it in your camera mode by calling something like GetAllActorsOfClass of SplineActor. Hopefully that helps a bit, interesting that the camera and not the character would move along a spline, makes for an interesting challenge.

[@aloevvvera857]

@@nancedevdiaries Thank you, I can confirm it works!

[@VideosFavero]

Hi Nance, In the static camera the character is always on his back and does not rotate "looking" at the camera. Is there any way to keep the camera fixed but allow this character rotation?

[@nancedevdiaries]

You could potentially add logic for when your pawn is in that camera volume to set your pawn to orient to movement instead of rotating with your control rotation (the camera rotation).

[@TheOtakuDev]

Can you make a tutorial on how to implement stamina/mana in lyra ? for a cast magic ability I'm trying to understand how lyra manages the health but its daunting trying to figure it all out with little to no online tutorials covering this topic.

[@nancedevdiaries]

That would be a good one! Lyra essentially uses the gameplay ability system, and mana would be a gameplay attribute. I'd suggest adding Mana, MaxMana, ManaRegen, Stamina, MaxStamina and StaminaRegen attributes in ULyraCombatSet. You can duplicate BaseDamage and all related functions/accessors. Then you can add those attributes as a cost in your abilities, and an infinite Gameplay Effect for stamina regen. This might be old documentation but a goldie for gameplay ability system : unreal.gg-labs.com/wiki-archives/networking/gameplay-abilities-and-you. I'll plan on making a video for this, good idea. I have 2 videos I want to do first. Here's a video that looks like it covers it (not the part where the abilities use those as costs though) kzbin.info/www/bejne/ronKq6h-nLSUfLM.

[@TheOtakuDev]

@@nancedevdiaries Thank you that was really insightful. I tried to duplicate the whole health system (attributes and component) and it was painful, buggy and I might have broken the health system in the process. will try to follow the tutorials you suggested and I'm waiting for all of your tutorials, The best UE5 lyra tutorials online (detailed yet easy to follow you really worked hard for these videos) . People still feel intimidated to use the project, but when one decides to level up and use the engine in an epic way, they will realise the true value of your channel (a hidden gem).

[@nancedevdiaries]

@@TheOtakuDev Hey I'd suggest you just start with duplicating the health attribute alone (not the health component). The health component probably has way more stuff than what the mana would need. That does sound like a painful time. Then you can setup a LyraGameplayEffect (GE_ConsumeMana) and have the modifier be "Mana", then value -10 (or whatever number) then add this GameplayEffect to your LyraGameplayAbility's Cost in the ClassDefaults (example: "GA_Fireball"). Your ability will need to call the "CommitAbility" (good for cooldown and costs) or "CommitAbilityCost" node. Then you do the same for some mana pickup but that it gives back mana (modifier cost not negative). As for the mana bar, you could take inspiration for the health bar, though I think that one relies on the healthComponent (haven't dug into that yet).

[@nancedevdiaries]

You know what I decided to make a tutorial about implementing mana next. Just getting over a cold in the meantime, waiting until my voice comes back. I'm not confident enough about my usage of cost over time so I'll skip stamina for now, since I'm doing it in a hacky way (using a looping timer to call CommitAbilityCost) in my current project for an "air" attribute.

[@The-Blue-Bird]

something been bothering me is ability reusability. like when we use "play montage" we won't be able to use the ability on another character, and will need to create new ability/child to change only the montage then it will require more complex logic to grant the right ability to the right character. in lyra's "B_MannequinPawnCosmetics" component we chose the right mesh based on gameplay tags can we make the montage variable in the ability be chosen based on a gameplay tag rule ? if (you got free time && no other ideas && this can actually be done) { video idea in lyra GA_Emote it has one montage for both Manny and Quinn , can you make the "montage to play" variable be selected by Cosmetic.AnimationStyle. ..... tag ? **why I think it's a good idea** if that can be done, we will have a single smart ability which will work with all characters, so when the project scale we will have less sources of bugs }

[@nancedevdiaries]

Good point. What you could also do is not define the montage in the ability itself but have some helper functions in your LyraCharacter like GetDashMontageFromDirection(FVector Direction) and override/define per different character. Then your ability just calls that function off the GetLyraCharacterFromActorInfo() function to get the montage to play. I haven't dug into the pawn cosmetics but maybe the functions could reside in there instead of on the LyraCharacter. Otherwise, as long as they have the same skeleton/some retargeting going on, the ability with the montage is re-usable.

[@stoneageprogrammer432]

NANCE, MAKE MORE TUTORIALS! You're a very good dev, and you have some original and good ideas for handling Lyra, and there are NOT a lot of good female game devs out there, especially doing Lyra, SO MAKE MORE TUTORIALS. I really like what you do and how you do it, I would hate to see you just give up. Come on, figure out what kind of game you really want to make, and do some more tutorials. I'll be watching them. PLEASE.

[@xTHHxAimiForevr]

where can I message you about paid work?

[@nancedevdiaries]

You can contact me at [e-mail] but I'm not available for work. Would love to know more about what people like to learn and what else I could share that's useful from my dev journey though.

[@dominicdean3913]

i like how epic telling us to treat lyra as engine code basically If you decided to use the ability system in your game you have to write hunderds of boilerplate code like in lyra xd

[@nancedevdiaries]

I'm really thankful Epic released Lyra. Super useful for a great head start with the ability system, advanced input system, Common UI, etc. It's a wonderful learning tool

[@WabalooJul]

Hi! Thanks for making these videos, they are really awesome! I was wondering if there is a camera lag feature in Lyra, I did not see any settings to do that with CameraModes. The lag option was available in the SpringArmComponent, which we don't use anymore with Lyra.

[@nancedevdiaries]

I haven't seen any use of the springArmComponent inside Lyra. I think they opted to use camera modes that dictate where the camera should be instead of the spring arm component. I've implemented camera lag inside my own third person camera mode. It's neat when it's a view that doesn't need lag that it's seperate. I'd be curious how we would use a spring arm component in Lyra as well, maybe parented to the player's camera and foregoing camera modes altogether?

[@macezarbhz]

Hey. Thanks for the excellent content. I started with this and made my own volumes which is working great. However, there's one point I can't really wrap my head around it. How does the camera works for Lyra. I know that, for example, on the static camera volume, I could modify: View.Location = PivotLocation; View.Rotation = PivotRotation; View.ControlRotation = View.Rotation; View.FieldOfView = FieldOfView; To force the camera to follow the player around, and that is useful, but I've been trying to create a new camera mode, for example a 2.5 view mode that I could attach to the pawn instead of using volumes to change the camera. Have you tried creating new camera modes for Lyra and/or could point me at the correct direction?

[@nancedevdiaries]

Thanks! For making a 2.5D camera mode that's the default, you could create your own camera mode, derrived from ULyraCameraMode. To use that camera mode, the "DefaultCameraMode" is set in Lyra in the Pawn Data. So you'd set it to your own USideScrollerCameraMode (naming is hard, but that would be your 2.5D camera mode) in the pawn data your experience uses, so HeroData_ShooterGame in most game modes in Lyra. The HeroData_Arena is an example of what you'd like to accomplish, since it doesn't use the third person camera mode as the default camera. As for the camera mode logic, You could put your logic in overriding the UpdateView() function. Would be something like: View.Location = GetPivotLocation() + cameraOffset; View.Rotation = PivotRotation; //

[@macezarbhz]

@@nancedevdiaries Thanks again. That woked like a charm.