Camera & Navigation Improvements [Beta]

[Update] October 5, 2023


Hey Creators,

We’re excited to announce a suite of Camera and Navigation improvements as a Studio beta! These changes to the Viewport Camera make it quick and frictionless to navigate around your workspace and focus/edit objects. These features have been released as a Studio beta feature under the name New Studio Camera Controls.

Whether you are a beginner looking to build your first world or a power user aiming to create complex environments, we hope these improvements will enhance your development experience on Roblox.

New Features

Camera Speed Customizability :movie_camera:

  1. If you have a mouse, you can now modify your camera speed without navigating to Studio Settings. Simply hold the Right Mouse Button and move the scroll wheel to increase or decrease your camera speed. A tooltip displaying the change can be seen underneath the view selector when the camera speed is changed.

    If you don’t have a mouse, you can change the speed directly from the tooltip!

  2. Speed changes are now adaptive to the size of an object when an object is focused. When focusing on an object by pressing F, your camera speed will dynamically adjust to your editing scale. Focusing on a relatively small object will make WASD move your camera move slower, while focusing on a larger object will make your camera move faster. This change can also be seen on the tooltip underneath the view selector. This feature can be disabled in Studio Settings.

Focus Interpolation :mag_right:

When pressing F to focus on an object, the camera will now interpolate to frame the selection rather than directly teleporting. This feature can be disabled in Studio Settings.

Current functionality:

New functionality:

Logarithmic Zoom🚀

You can now make the distance traveled by the scroll wheel adaptive based on the size of the object. This can be done in two ways:

  • When pressing F to focus on an object, the camera will move slower as you scroll closer and closer to an object’s center.

  • When pressing Ctrl while scrolling, the camera will move slower as you scroll closer and closer to the point under your mouse.

This allows more granular movements with the scroll wheel when manipulating a close-up object. This feature can be disabled in Studio Settings.

Current functionality:

New functionality (focused object):

New functionality (Ctrl + scrolling)

Frame rate independence :film_strip:

The Viewport Camera has been decoupled from frame rate. Now, changing your frame rate won’t automatically increase or decrease your camera speed.

Notes

Please note that some of these changes may not work if you are currently using plugins that affect the camera. Moreover, some features may not be enabled if the CameraType not set to Fixed, which is the default for the Studio viewport camera.

What’s Next

Your feedback is essential in our continuous improvement process! Please let us know your thoughts and any other improvements you’d like to see.

Special thanks to @CaiusCosades0 and everyone on the Studio Builder Tools team for all their help with this beta.

Thank you!

EDIT:

Thank you for your continued feedback. We hear your concerns and are working on the appropriate changes. For now, turn the beta off in File > Beta Features if the additions aren’t working for you.

First and foremost, we’ve decided to add a Studio setting to enable or disable the RMB + Scroll Wheel binding for modifying the free-camera movement speed. With this setting disabled, the RMB + Scroll combo will follow the old functionality of moving the camera forward and backwards.We’ve also addressed the lag spikes observed when changing camera speed, and have fixed the regression with using camera controls in the server view mode.

These changes are now LIVE in Studio!

Thanks so much for your continued feedback, and we look forward to hearing more from you as the beta progresses!

229 Likes

This topic was automatically opened after 10 minutes.

Excellent Update Roblox, the camera has been needing an improvement for a while, can’t wait to customise my camera movement speed!

29 Likes

I cannot move the camera in Server view when playing solo. This is broken and quite frustrating.

Also, when changing the speed with the scroll wheel, there should be some sort of visual indication of the new speed (similar to Unity). Edit: It appears this is visible, but only if you have the View Selector visible. I believe this shouldn’t be tied to the view selector. There should be a way to reset to the default speed too.

Would be great to see an option for smooth movement too.

58 Likes

This is a promising update, but YIKES it started off poorly:

This is seriously going to get in the way since I do a lot of scroll+looking around movement

And here’s another use case of scroll+look around that will be absolutely destroyed; inserting model files, and taking them to another part of a map (at least this is how I do it, click and hold the model, then hold right click and scroll towards where I want to go, whilst dragging that model)

92 Likes

I already tried it but it is so unusual for me… so I hope there will be option to use old camera system in future

25 Likes

Very nice QoL update, but I am experiencing an fps issue when using scroll wheel while focused on an object with F, the fps drops from 60 to ~20

15 Likes

They really could have just opted for Alt + Scroll Wheel, RMB + Scroll is so awkward

42 Likes

Yes, they need to add this to the keybinds section of the settings so you can change it to whatever you want.

They also should really change the combination anyways because this is probably the worst combination they could come up with. Trying to look around and zoom? Sike, now your camera is as fast as lightning.

21 Likes

dont like this. i usually scroll to move, so this gets in my way from navigating quickly from places

32 Likes

LMAO I had this feature before its release because of this bug

The problem I described was the use of right-click to rotate the camera while using the mousewheel to navigate, and the fact that now it modifies the camera speed

8 Likes

This is really awesome, especially for the frame rate changes. I can finally use fps unlockers without having my camera speed fluctuate like crazy! (though the rbxfpsunlocker might’ve broke for me this update lol)

As @VGVC2 mentioned, I also rely on looking around with my camera while zooming with the scroll wheel. Is there any way to make it where an additional key has to be held down as well, like Ctrl, to change the speed?

Also, the F to focus changes are neat, but one issue - I cannot move my camera around while it’s in the middle of zooming. I could immediately feel this friction. I also do feel a delayed lag spike after it finishes lerping, I don’t have any plugins enabled.

Here’s the labels that keep popping up -

7 Likes

This has been highly disruptive to my workflow. Can you consider changing it to something like alt + scroll wheel? I am constantly holding right click in order to move, and scrolling to zoom.

26 Likes

I agree with this strongly. Immediately noticed how this disrupts my usual scroll wheel to jump navigation workflow. Also, the frame drops while adjusting camera speed are incredibly disruptive.

Please consider taking on the alt+scroll wheel hotkey!

17 Likes

Really not sure why it was opted to use RMB+SCROLL to change the zoom speed. Many developers, including myself, use these keybinds in combination to zoom & fly around our maps, and now, with this update, it is impossible to do so. It is a nice feature, just have it on another keybind such as ALT+RMB+SCROLL or, allow us to customise the keybind.

Other than this, I think this update is pretty neat apart from the frequent framerate drops when focussing on a part, or with some of the other reported issues under this thread.

17 Likes

mailbox
(EDIT: Apparently, the ROBLOX staff member who posted this also liked this)

62 Likes

Please, revert this update. This is extremely unintuitive to someone who has had experience with Roblox studio since 2014. This change has been incredibly disruptive to my team and I’s workflow to the point where you just don’t want to open studio anymore. It also breaks parity with the Roblox Player and will be disruptive to any new developer who comes into the field from playing Roblox games.

Please do not implement this change in its current state. Something like an alt+scroll would be much better for those who aren’t interested in constantly changing their camera speed.

32 Likes

This is really getting in my way, and it’s such a pain

17 Likes

Can the camera not randomly decide what speed it should be at? This is incredibly annoying.

12 Likes

Dislike this as it has mess up my development flow big time. Is Studio Staff going to make it so it can be an option and not force?

12 Likes