Track View Nodes

Overview

The Track View is the tool for making interactive movie sequences. You can add any object or entity that you want to manipulate through trackview and depending on the type of node, you will have its default tracks available that you can animate over time.

There are different types of nodes that are available to add in Track View.

Director (Scene) Node

A Director Node is a Track View Node that contains a Camera track that stores viewpoint settings. You can add key frames on the Camera Track to specify which Camera to be active during a sequence.

Prior to CryENGINE 3.3, you only had a Scene Node. The Director Node is actually a modified Scene Node that has additional new tracks (Capture track, Timewarp, etc) available.

You can add multiple Director Nodes in a scene but only one Director Node can be active at a time.

To set a Director Node active, right-click on the node and click Set as Active Director.

The active Director Node is marked by its purple background in the left nodes pane while inactive Director nodes are distinguished by its gray background.

A Director Node can contain child nodes and can behave like a group node (or folder). Usual group nodes are for just organizing and have no special functionality.

However, a director node as a folder has a functionality. When a Director Node is inactive, it's children nodes animation are deactivated. This feature is useful when a cinematic artist wants to enable and disable animation on specific objects for the same shot for offline rendering.

An Inactive Director node has its contained tracks and child nodes also specially marked by some colors.

Child nodes of a director node are only activated (i.e. played) only when the parent director node is currently active

You can add multiple tracks to a Director Node that provide different functionality.

Camera Track

By default, a Director Node has a Camera track. You can add key frames to this track to select a camera from the sequence to be used as viewpoint. In other words, you can set your different shots for your scene in the Camera track.

Capture Track

You can add a Capture Track to your Director node. This track provides you the ability to setup key frames with properties for outputting image sequences.

For a detailed tutorial on how to capture an image sequence, please refer to Using Capture Track to render an Image Sequence document.

Timewarp Track

The slow motion effect can be achieved using the Timewarp track in Trackview. It is a track that can be added to the Director node. The time warp factor can easily be adjusted via curve.

Time warp doesn't apply to sound. For example, if an explosion particle is being triggered in a slow motion shot, its sound effect (if attached) will remain the same. The best solution is to use a particle with no sound and have a custom sound created specifically for the scene.

GoTo Track

The GoTo track sends the playhead to the specified frame in sequence and plays from that frame.

For more information on usage of GoTo track, refer to Jumping Ahead/Back in a Scene and Interactivity documentation.

Image Effect Nodes

Screen Fader Node

You can add a Screen Fader node to your Track View sequence to add Fade In and Fade out to your sequence.

For more information on Screen Fader node, please refer to this document.

Depth of Field Node

Add a Depth of Field node to adjust the depth of field.

For detailed information on how to setup Depth of Field and its usage in CryENGINE, please refer to this document.

HDR Setup Node

You can add a HDR Setup node to manipulate the HDR brightness level and brightness threshold of your sequence.

For more information on HDR Setup node, please refer to this document.

Color Correction Node

You can add a Color Correction node to your Track View sequence that allows you to adjust the CMYK levels, Brightness, Contrast, Saturation and Hue.