Cine Drone - Path Based Fpv Drone Cam
Oculis Studio
DOCUMENTATION
Cine Drone
Everything you need, on one page. Five minutes end to end.
Blender 5.2 or newer. The physics runs in a geometry-nodes simulation zone, so 4.x cannot run it. In the add-on list it appears as Animation: FPV Drone Rig.
Install
1. Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Install from Disk…
2. Choose fpv_drone_rig.zip — the zip, not the loose .py.
3. Tick Animation: FPV Drone Rig to enable it.
4. In the 3D viewport press N → FPV tab → Set Up FPV Rig.
That builds the path, rig, camera target and camera, wired and ready, all inside one FPV_Drone_Rig collection. Press Bake Camera and play.
Quick start
The whole workflow, in the order you actually do it.
| 1. Draw your line | Edit FPV_Path, or just grab the ghost drones. Already have a curve? Select it and hit Fly This Curve |
| 2. Pick a feel | Cinematic, Freestyle or Race, at the top of the panel |
| 3. Pick a timing mode | Usually Smart FPV: set one top speed and it works the rest out |
| 4. Direct the camera | Drop Look Targets on your subjects, or rotate a ghost to aim it |
| 5. Bake Camera | Plain keyframes on a normal camera. Or turn on Live and it re-bakes as you edit |
The ghost drones
Every waypoint is a little drone showing where and how the camera flies. Moving them is how you work — you rarely need to touch the curve itself.
| Grab (G) | Moves the flight line. That ghost locks (turns cyan) and stays put |
| Rotate (R Z) | Face this way while passing here — a yaw aim |
| Tilt (R X) | Pitch the body here — the cinematic reveal move |
| Tip past vertical | Authors a flip. Roll it past 80° for a 360 roll. Clear Trick undoes it |
| Bank | Never yours to set. Leaning always comes out of the physics — that is what keeps it honest |
— White = free · cyan = hand-placed and locked · gold = pinned to a frame. The nose wedge is the camera direction.
— Ghosts + Distribute lays down evenly spaced drones. Five for broad strokes, twenty for fine control.
— After a drag settles, the unlocked ghosts re-space themselves evenly between the locked ones. Locked ones never move.
— After every bake they strike the pose they actually flew, so you can read bank and pitch down the whole line at a glance.
Timing — three ways
Same flight, three ways to schedule it. Set this in the Flight Plan panel.
Smart FPV
You set one top speed. It caps corner speeds by lateral g, starts braking early enough to arrive flyable, carries speed into dives and bleeds it on climbs. Start here.
Speed Sections
You author metres per second per section; the arrival frames and scene length fall out of it. Split by Corners or Auto Sections will carve the path up for you.
Waypoint Pins
You pin exact frames at chosen drones and it solves the speeds between them. This is the one for hitting music cues and edit points.
All three ease speed changes across boundaries, so the drone never gear-changes.
Look-at
Look Targets — watch this thing. Press Add Look Target and place the sphere on your subject. It is distance-driven: the drone finds it on approach, holds it through the pass with the head turning past the shoulder, and lets go as it goes by.
| Inner / Outer radius | How close it has to be before the drone cares |
| Influence | 1 = locked track, 0.5 = a glance |
| Max Angle | When to let go. 140° watches it slide past, 90° only while ahead |
| Weight | Who wins when two targets compete — they crossfade with a decisive pan |
Ghost aims — face this way at this moment. Rotate or tilt a ghost. Aims are deliberate, so they carry more weight and ignore the angle gate. Both instruments run through the drone’s own rotation spring, so acquisitions swing on with real momentum instead of snapping.
Flight feel
Start with a preset. If you only ever touch two dials, make them the first two.
| Agility (g) | How hard it can corner. Low runs wide lines. 1.5–2 cinematic, 4–6 racy |
| Overshoot | Over-rotation past big heading changes — the whip. 0–0.15 glassy, 0.5–1.0 rough |
| Attitude Smoothing | The camera soft-mount. High filters attitude twitch out, low leaves it in |
| Wander | Breathing drift on the straights. Nothing says hand-flown like this one |
| Altitude Sag | Sinks a little in hard banks and tilts, the way a real quad does |
| Jitter | Prop-wash shake. A very little goes a long way |
| Base FOV / Speed Sensitivity | The lens widens as it speeds up |
Springs, chase damping and path grip live under Advanced. You will not need them often.
Bake, Live and the overlay
Bake Camera solves the timing, then the look-at, then the physics, and writes plain keyframes to the camera target, the lens and the compositor distortion. A few seconds on a normal scene. Nothing at render time depends on the add-on.
Live re-bakes on its own about half a second after an edit settles, and holds off during playback.
The overlay colours your path by solved speed — cyan slow, green cruise, orange fast. The magenta line is where the drone actually flies. The gap between the two is your inertia, and the panel reports the biggest one in metres. Labels give per-drone frame and m/s; the yellow crosshair is the playhead.
If something looks wrong
| Set Up FPV Rig fails | You installed the loose .py. Install the zip instead, or put fpv_rig_assets.blend next to the script |
| No FPV tab in the N-panel | The add-on is not enabled, or the tab was renamed in preferences |
| “Rig objects loose in the scene” | An older scene. Press Tidy Collections beside Set Up FPV Rig |
| Renamed things and it lost them | Auto-Detect re-finds the four rig objects. Resync Drones rebuilds the ghosts |
| Violent whips at look targets | Too fast, too close. Slow the shot, widen the ease frames, or shrink the radius |
| It runs wide through corners | That is momentum, and it is the point. Raise Agility or lower Chase if you need it tighter |
| Pins land slightly off | Expect around 0.3–0.5 m at full Chase. Same reason |
Preferences
Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → FPV Drone Rig. Saved with Blender, not with your .blend.
— Interface — which sidebar tab the panels use, label size, speed legend on or off.
— New Rigs — what a fresh rig starts with: preset, camera uptilt, ghost count, Live on or off.
— Editing — whether dragging a ghost locks it, whether the rest re-flow, and how the gold frame handle behaves.
— Files — point Set Up FPV Rig at your own template .blend if you want to.
Three things worth knowing
— The uptilt on the camera is the FPV signature. At cruise the drone noses down and the horizon comes level. Smart FPV keeps that matched for you.
— Fewer ghosts means a simpler, cleaner path shape. Reach for Distribute before you reach for the curve editor.
— One path and camera per scene — multiple drones in one scene is on the roadmap.
Stuck on something?
Email [email protected] and tell me your Blender version and what you were doing. I answer these myself.
Included
Includes 12 months of
- Support from Oculis Studio
- Product updates
Extend this product’s Support Period +12 months: 50% of product price
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