The Camera represents the player's point of view, such as how the player sees the world. For this reason,
cameras only have relevance to human-controlled players. The PlayerController specifies a camera class
and instantiates a Camera Actor (ACameraActor) which is used to calculate the position and orientation the player views
the world from.
For basic examples on how to work with Cameras, refer to Using Cameras. For an example of how to layer animations onto cameras, refer to the CameraAnim feature documentation.
CameraActor
All of the camera's behavior and properties are set up in the CameraComponent. The CameraActor class primarily acts as a wrapper for the CameraComponent, so that the camera can be placed directly in the level rather than within another class. When using a CameraComponent in the Editor, You can navigate to Details > Camera Settings to set whether the camera is in Perspective or Orthographic mode.
The vertical field of view (FOV) can be set for perspective mode, and the width in world units can be set for orthographic mode. For both modes, the aspect ratio can be designated and preset aspect ratios for common devices and display types are provided.
You can add Post process effects to the camera, and it is possible to scale the strength of the post process effects.
Two components are added to the CameraComponent to assist with visual placement in the Editor, although they will not be visible during gameplay. A FrustumComponent shows where the camera field of view is located. This does not show by default, but can be turned on by selecting Show > Advanced > Camera Frustums in the Viewport.
CameraComponent
A CameraComponent represents a camera viewpoint and settings, such as Projection Type, Field Of View, and Post-Process Overrides. If the ViewTarget is a CameraActor or an Actor that contains a CameraComponent and has bFindCameraComponentWhenViewTarget
set to true. A related property that can be set for any Pawn is bTakeCameraControlWhenPossessed, where the Pawn will automatically become the ViewTarget upon possession by the PlayerController.
Actors and PlayerControllers
PlayerControllers and Actors contain a CalcCamera function. An Actor's CalcCamera function returns the camera view of the first CameraComponent in the Actor, if bFindCameraComponentWhenViewTarget is true and a CameraComponent is present, otherwise it gets the Actor's location and rotation. In the PlayerController class, the CalcCamera function behaves similarly, returning the location of the possessed Pawn if it exists, and the
control rotation of the PlayerController.
PlayerCameraManager
The PlayerCameraManager is responsible for managing the camera for a particular player. It defines the final view properties used by other systems like the Renderer. The PlayerCameraManager can function as a "virtual eyeball" to see the world. It can compute the final camera properties directly, or it can blend between other objects or Actors that influence the camera (blending from one CameraActor to another.)
The PlayerCameraManager's primary external responsibility is to reliably respond to various Get() functions, such as GetCameraViewPoint.
By default, a PlayerCameraManager mantains a view target, which is the primary actor the camera is associated with. It can apply various post effects to the final view state, such as camer animations, post-process effects or special effects such as dirt on the camera lens.
If you need to inherit from the PlayerCameraManager, and you are creating a parent class Blueprint instead of C++, then the PlayerCameraManager contains the BlueprintUpdateCamera function to provide your own custom camera implementations.
When using this function, return true to use the returned values, or return false to ignore them.
The UpdateViewTarget function in PlayerCameraManager queries the ViewTarget and returns that ViewTarget's Point Of View. This function is what calls the BlueprintUpdateCamera function if you have subclassed APlayerCameraManager and are not looking through a CameraComponent.
ViewTarget
The ViewTarget struct, defined in PlayerCameraManager, is responsible for providing the PlayerCameraManager with an ideal Point of View (POV). ViewTarget contains information on the target Actor, the Controller of the target Actor (for non-locally controlled Pawns), and the PlayerState, which is used to follow the same player through Pawn transitions and other changes while spectating.
The camera information passed to PlayerCameraManager through the POV property is in the form of a FMinimalViewInfo struct. This struct contains the basic camera information from a CameraComponent, including the Location, Rotation,
Projection Mode (Perspective or Orthographic), FOV, Orthographic Width, Aspect Ratio, and Post Process Effects. Providing the PlayerCameraManager with access to these values allows the PlayerCameraManager to
blend between two camera modes during its camera management.
Camera Responsibility Chain
Game-specific camera behavior can be provided at any point along the camera "responsibility chain", which flows from top to bottom through the following classes before passing to ALocalPlayer and ending with Rendering, Scene View (FSceneView), and other related systems.