UE5 Gameplay Cameras: Coda?

So I figured I would post an update that is part of the actual developer diary I had on the UE5 Gameplay Cameras, in case someone out there only followed that category of posts: I was part of the mass layoffs that saw Epic Games get rid of almost a quarter of their employees this week. I had only posted a small status update so far.

What’s Next for UE5 Gameplay Cameras

I don’t know what’s next for GPC. I was the one who started that plugin, and I was the only developer on it — and only part time at that (the other half of my time was spent on Sequencer). It is possible that someone else picks it up but it’s unclear at this point. GPC is powering the Verse camera system for UE6’s “metaverse” tech, but it’s only doing so “under the hood”. That is: you’re supposed to “just write Verse code” and not assemble your cameras using the graph editors I built. In fact, UE6 currently plans to have as few “custom editors” like these as possible, preferring doing everything directly in Verse.

As a result, I assume that the people working on UE6 will only address runtime issues and won’t have the time or desire to work on the “data-driven” aspect of GPC, its editor workflows, UIs, integration with Actors and Blueprints, and so on. If you need some clarity on that, I would strongly recommend that you contact the UE team by asking that question on UDN (now called EPS).

When people asked me, a year ago, “what the plan is” for GPC, I was indeed planning to support it for as long as possible. Sadly, “as long as possible” wasn’t quite as long as I thought.

Some Personal Thoughts

When I started working on the first draft of this camera system more than 10 years ago, in a different engine, I had set myself the goal to bring gameplay cameras through the same sort of data-driven evolution we saw in the early-2000s for shaders, animation, audio, and more. I wrote about it in detail in “A Modernization of Camera Systems”.

I shipped a few games with this idea, and last I checked, that first system is still shipping more games. UE5 was a better and bigger engine to prove my idea, and I’m happy it seemed to be on the right path, judging from the many emails and Discord messages I received over the last few months. I’m very grateful for all the feedback y’all sent me — everybody was very nice, enthusiastic, critical, and supportive. I would typically get some encouragements, a couple of bug reports, ideas for improving workflows, and a drink offer, all in the same email. This is the sort of gamedev community I like to see! Good job everyone! 😄

What’s Next

I’m currently of course looking for a new job, and chatting with a couple of game studios to that effect. If you’re interested in someone with a lot of experience in cinematics, cameras, animation, tools, and pipelines, hit me up via email. I recently setup a business so I’m also available for freelance contracting work, which might be better in some cases given the state of the industry.

That’s it for UE5 Gameplay Cameras from me for now. I’m OK being part of the layoffs (I was internally quite vocally against UE6’s technical direction) but I am quite sad to abandon all the people who contacted me about building their game using GPC. Leaving these people behind is the hardest part of this. Good luck to everyone who had camera-related chats with me over the past year!

In the meantime, if you want some camera goodness, please check out my friends at Black Eye Technologies, along with cool folks like Evelyn Schwab.