Rails, cranes, and shot recipes

Camera Rig Rail

Place from Cinematic actors, shape its Blueprint Spline, attach the Cine Camera to the dolly, and animate Current Position on Rail from 0 to 1 in Sequencer. Lock Orientation to Rail makes camera rotation relative to dolly orientation; otherwise animate orientation independently. Spatially even spline travel is not guaranteed by evenly spaced time keys—inspect speed and use key interpolation.

Camera Rig Crane

Attach the camera to the mount, then animate arm length, yaw, and pitch. Lock mount pitch/yaw only when camera orientation should follow the crane. Combine Rail and Crane only when the extra degrees of freedom materially serve the shot; nested transforms complicate framing and debugging.

Recipes

• Reveal: begin with occlusion/tight frame, move Rail/Crane to expose subject, preserve focal plane.
• Tracking shot: rail/dolly carries translation; camera independently maintains composition/look.
• Dialogue cut: consistent eyeline/screen direction, controlled lens/focus, intentional cut timing.
• Gameplay establishing shot: show objective/path, minimize duration, retain/restore player context, and provide skip/replay policy.
• Impact camera: directional short modifier/shake layered over stable gameplay camera; never replace precise aiming information with uncontrolled jitter.

Use unreal-splines for general spline construction decisions. Camera Rig Rail owns the cinematic tracking-shot implementation and Sequencer keying.