Blend List Virtual Camera in Unity 2020
Cinemachine Blend List Camera
“The Cinemachine Blend List Camera component executes a sequence of blends or cuts among its child Virtual Cameras.
When the Blend List camera is activated, it executes its list of instructions, activating the first child Virtual Camera in the list, holding for a designated time, then cutting or blending to the next child, and so on.
The Blend List camera holds the last Virtual Camera until Cinemachine Brain or Timeline deactivates the Blend List camera.
Tip: Use a Blend List Camera instead of Timeline for simpler, automatic sequences.”
The first thing we need to do is create a Blend List Camera by clicking Cinemachine > Create Blend List Camera.
We can add or remove child VCams easily in the Inspector window for our Blend List Camera.
Now I’ve used Align With View to position my 3 child VCams around the scene at different angles.
Now, even though I added a VCam earlier under “Virtual Camera Children”, it did not automatically add it to the blend in list.
So, as seen above, I’ve added VCam 4 to the list and I’ve given hold and ease-in timings to each VCam in the sequence.
If we hit play, we can see our VCams switching in sequence.
Note that once we reach t he last VCam, it will just remain on the VCam from then on.
In a scene where you want to show the character at the beginning of the level, fly around to different cameras to highlight aspects of the scene, making the player VCam the last camera in this list would be a good idea.
When the sequence is done, the player is all set to go and the correct VCam is being used for gameplay.
Now, if we enable the Loop checkbox, this will cycle through our sequence of cameras indefinitely.
You would need some outside code or visual code to break out of this loop and onto the desired camera.
This might be useful for loading screens, especially if say you have a multiplayer lobby filling up and the players who are already loaded up get a nice VCam sequence overview of the map or level while they wait.
Once the lobby is full, your game state code could break out of this sequence and onto the player cameras.
Another great use for these looping sequenced VCams would be to have this output not to the entire player screen, but to an-game object, a security screen, that has this sequence of VCams playing through for each security camera in the scene.
Or even with just a single security camera, you could use the Blend List Camera to do a timed movement, where you look to the left, pause, pan to the right, pause, and loop.
What you would need to do is have 2 identical child VCams, with the only difference being that one camera looks left while the other looks right.
Then you can set your hold timing, ease in, etc and watch this loop.
Since the blend between the cameras is so seamless, assuming you have them positioned correctly, the player’s screen will appear to be just one camera panning from side to side with pauses.
