How to Create the Handheld Look on Unity Cameras using Noise
A handheld camera in film-making and video production refers to a camera that is held in one’s hands rather than mounted on a tripod. As such, the camera view has some level of unstediness that comes from the operator’s grip. According to an article by Kyle DeGuzman, handheld shots can be used to express intimacy and closeness in situations that garner the audience’s sympathy, among other usages.
That being said, in video games we can take it a step further and even implement this into gameplay such as it is seen in some shooters when aiming with a Sniper Rifle or a specific aim lense. Luckily, Cinemachine in Unity makes this extremely easy to achieve, let’s start learning.
Objective: Learn how to create a hand-held camera using Cinemachine’s virtual cameras, and by adjusting their noise parameters.
Note: This uses Cinemachine in Unity. If you’re not familiar with it, you keep up with the list of articles here, which includes how to install it and basics.
Adding Noise to Virtual Cameras
- Let’s begin by adding a virtual camera. This camera will be using the default setting for the Aim and Body features for this example.
2. In the Noise section of the Virtual Camera, select Basicl Multi Channel Perlin to allows you to generate noise from a predefined nois profile asset.
3. You will notice a warning message prompting you to choose a Noise Profile. There are quite a few to choose from, all which have a preset behavior to them,however, you can edit their parameters to customize them so choose whatever is closest to the desired results and go from there.
In this example, I am using Handhel_normal_mild since it already gives me the result I want from the get-go.
Customizing the Noise
Customizing your noise profile can be a simple as altering the Amplitude Gain(how much it shakes) and the Frequency Gain(how often it shakes). You can also alter the Pivot Offset which offetst the camera’s position when rotatating.
The Result:
This is what the Virtual Camera looks like when applying a handheld profile without alterning any of its values.
Which is similar to the unsteadiness you can see at the start of the following image:
