Cinematic Outward - Full Graphics Control & Camera Overhaul

This started as a simple camera mod, and accidentally turned into a whole lot more. Fully client-side, doesn't matter if you're the only person in your online party with the mod.

The camera systems are designed with machinima, content creation, and streaming in mind -- but they're also just a lot of fun.

If you don't care about those, this mod provides a convenient and lightweight way to overhaul your graphics, by using the game engine's built-in functionality!

Recent Updates:

• Multiplayer nameplates, damage numbers, lock on target, etc all now properly line up in cinematic camear modes!
• Pressing escape when in inventory/looting/dialog doesn't end Director mode, so you can fully play in cinematic mode if you want.
• Reduced startup and loading time, should be almost negligible impact now.
• Preset system no longer requires a restart to see your new presets appear in the list. May break presets made with older versions of this mod (but since this update comes 1 day after initial release, hopefully that's not many people lol). Future updates that adjust settings shouldn't cause this issue going forwards.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Special thanks to Grandma Death, Valaenara, and Auntie Carnage.

What you receive:

1. FULL CONTROL OVER POST-PROCESSING AND COLOR

Everything is configured through the BepInEx Configuration Manager (F5). You can even save and load presets!

All settings tweaks disabled by default, allowing you to turn on only what you want. Outward already has some of these effects on by default, and when you enable them in this mod it overrides the defaults. Disabling them will revert the changes back to default game settings.

• Ambient Occlusion (AO): Outward has some by default. Enabling this overrides it and lets you adjust.

• Screen Space Reflections (SSR): More accurate light reflections on shiny surfaces. Wicked cool.

• Anti-Aliasing (AA): A few different anti-aliasing methods to choose from. TAA is probably the best IMO.

• Depth of Field (DoF): Configurable separately for Normal Play and Director/Free-cam Mode. Unity's DoF is a little janky but I like it.

• Color Grading: Temperature, Tint, Exposure, Saturation, and Contrast. Play in black and white if you want, hell yeah.

• Film Effects: Bloom, Vignette, Chromatic Aberration, and Film Grain. I especially like how Film Grain looks in this game.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ This is all achieved using Unity's native post-processing! This mod does not inject anything fancy, it just uses what is already present in the engine. Someone else made a more intense graphics mod called UE5 Overhaul, so if you want crazy graphics check that one out. This is more of a lite approach.

2. CINEMATIC DIRECTOR MODE

Press Left Alt + X and the game turns into a movie. Using a weighted randomizer of different shot types, the camera automatically cuts to new angles based on time, distance, or if your character walks behind something for too long. Untested in splitscreen, probably breaks like crazy.

• Shot Types: Locked Static, Tripod Pan, Chase Cam, and Slider Track shots. You can adjust the probability of each, or even turn them off entirely individually.

• Combat Action Cam: The moment you lock onto an enemy, the camera snaps to a playable, over-the-shoulder action camera so you can (try to) fight without turning the Director Mode off. It sort of works.

• Cinematic Extras: Cinematic Letterboxing and procedural camera shake. The letterbox looks kinda bad with the HUD on, but super slick with it off.

• Smart Movement Sync: It's hard to orient your movement in a cinematic camera mode. I added an adjustable golden indicator at your feet that always points in the direction your character thinks is "forwards". When you stop moving in Director Mode, your movement axis aligns with the cinematic camera angle. (You can see it happen via the indicator or the compass)

  If you have a hard time going the right way, just hold still for a moment and then your controls will align with your view. While moving, your character orientation won't change as the camera angles switch, until you stop moving. (Let me know if you have a better idea on how to handle this, I want to make it more intuitive to control. You can also turn this off.)

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つIn the settings menu you can customize thresholds and behaviors for everything. I tried to give sensible defaults, and label it all in ways that make sense, so just play around! This camera mode isn't perfect by any stretch, and sometimes you get some really bad/confusing shots - but I've found it surprisingly playable for what it is.

3. MULTIPLAYER SPECTATOR

This mod enables multiplayer spectation! ...Spectatorism? ...Spectability? ... There's a spectator mode now.

Hit Left Alt + ] or Left Alt + [ to jump to the next or previous player. Keep pressing the key to cycle through everyone (it loops around). It works whether you're alive or dead!

Spectating is basically Director Mode pointed at someone else. The camera cuts around whoever you're watching using all the same shot types. If you're alive while spectating you still control your own character the whole time, which is kind of funny. If you're playing solo, nothing happens.

It switches back to you automatically if you get revived or if the person you're watching leaves. To stop spectating on your own, just cycle back to yourself, or turn the camera off (Esc ).

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Now you can watch your friends instead of your own corpse while you wait for them to kite whatever monster to death. It's also handy when you get split up in the overworld.

4. SMOOTH FLYING FREE-CAM

A nice free camera, with some momentum to it. Feels sort of like a drone cam. Great for getting B roll or smooth custom shots.

Hit Left Alt + ~ to enter the free camera. Adjust your speed with the Scroll Wheel, and adjust your zoom with Left Alt + Scroll Wheel.

It uses a sort of hacky autofocus that I'm not super happy with. Probably will update in the future, and it is adjustable in the F5 menu like everything else.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ Believe it or not I haven't yet tried flying it super far away to see what happens. I bet there's some weird stuff, but you could also ruin surprises for yourself with it.

Default Hotkeys

You can remap all of these keys in the F5 menu, not in the game's normal keybinding section.

Installation & Configuration

Just use R2ModMan, and click "download with dependencies".

Or, install it manually:

1. Install BepInEx and the Configuration Manager plugin for Outward.

2. Drop OutwardCinecamDefed.dll into your BepInEx/plugins folder.

3. Launch the game and press F5 to open the Configuration Manager.

4. Expand the Cinematic Outward section. Configure your post processing in the top part, then configure your Director rules at the bottom. I tried to keep it somewhat organized but it's uhh... a lot.

Known Issues

• None of the fancy camera modes have been built for or tested in splitscreen mode. It's likely a disaster.

• Free-cam autofocus is kind of screwed up. Working on it.

• The skybox is weird - if you turn the saturation all the way down it stays blue. Huh.

• Director Mode is a bit janky to control and stuff, but that might just be the nature of it.

• When first loading into a zone, the post-processing takes a split second to pop in. You can see it pretty clearly. Not too terribly annoying but something I hope to fix. It's because the volume gets lazy-loaded once you're actually in a new zone (to avoid weird loading screen issues).

• Native controller input isn't supported but using Steam input you can map keyboard inputs and it all pretty much works enough

• Preset saving/loading is a bit hacky. It should work, but it's just not pretty.

• Probably something glaring that I've missed despite testing this extensively. (Email me if you find something: gamestuff at poweredbypodcube.com)

How It Works

Outward was made in Unity, which includes a post-processing stack built right in. However, the developers only utilized a few of its capabilities for the base game. While I think the game looks perfectly good by default, this lets you have full control to do whatever you want!

This mod doesn't inject external shaders like ReShade; it hooks directly into the engine's native rendering pipeline. When initialized, the mod grabs Global.MainCamera, forces the DepthTextureMode.Depth flag to active (telling the GPU to generate a depth buffer), and injects a custom PostProcessVolume on the fly set to global priority 9999. This lets us add Bloom, ColorGrading, AmbientOcclusion, ScreenSpaceReflections, and DepthOfField settings directly to that volume. It's pretty performant, too!

AI DISCLOSURE: AI WAS HEAVILY USED TO ASSIST IN CREATING THE CODE FOR THIS MOD. HOWEVER, I AM ALSO A PROGRAMMER AND HAVE WORKED IN UNITY, SO I KNOW A GOOD BIT ABOUT WHAT I'M DOING. I BUILT THE ORIGINAL CAMERA MOD BY HAND, AND THEN USED FREE TIER CHATBOTS TO ITERATE AND EXPAND ON IT FASTER THAN I COULD BY HAND. I DO NOT PAY MONEY FOR ANY AI USAGE, AND I AM AGAINST THE RECKLESS DEPLOYMENT AND EXPANSION OF COMMERCIAL GENERATIVE AI AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE ENVIRONMENT, LOCAL COMMUNITIES, AND ARTISTS.