Cine Tracer

Great stuff

awesome for work and have really enjoyed it

It is such a difficult software to use and lots of stuffs are missing. They should have put up a trial version to try and see if this is what they are looking for. Expecting a refund asap. Please don’t not buy if you are looking for a easy Cine lighting setup solution

Tried this out to possibly use this as a tool to help me do pre-production for film projects and to
use as practice for lighting, but there are still a lot of bugs like getting stuck and not being able to move
and felt very clunky. It's a good idea and vision but I would say don't buy it until there are significant additions
to gear available to use and big bug patches

It seems like a good application, but you cannot save what you have built and this fact makes the application absolutely useless.

DO NOT BUY!!! nothing works as it should, it's a waste of money and time. I've been waiting for years for it to be of any use, however it seems to just be a money grab.

Please, don't buy. It's abandoned. Lack any realy useful feature for serious use. It is a bad "game" with nothing really useful. Bought it in the first day of the pre-order thinking it could be great, but its trash. Don't waste your money like I did :)

Waste of money so far, I would have been better off just learning UE and taking screenshots. Using UE directly has way more features than this mess.

This project has been going for so long and so slow, I feel I got scammed. I bought it on its promise to deliver more and better content but the creator is more of a niche-cinematographer than an actual developer, at this point he should have gotten external devs to help him, it's been 4 years and there's not a sight of a release any soon.

EDIT: To give an idea of how bad the development of this has been, this was made in UE4, by now UE5 has been already been released and optimized to hell and back

DO NOT BUY.

A good idea, a tool for filmmaker that fails in ergonomics and lack of basic features (seizable sets selements, extended library, more light fixtures, azerty keyboard mode...)
A developpement / updates that is so slow that I doubt that Cinetracer is in the mind of its creator.

Sorry Matt, I love your youtube channel, but 80€ and no basic features after all those years... I feel like i've been screwed.

This has been a huuuge waste of money and a showcase for why the whole 'early access' system needs to be overhauled. The app has essentially been abandoned in a pretty terrible state by Matt Workman - it is not worth buying or investing in, and I will be boycotting anything this guy brings out in the future. The price is absolutely ridiculous for half baked ideas, bugs, and unfulfilled feature plans. I wish Steam would hold him accountable and im extremely annoyed that I was suckered into this from a source I usually trust - film riot. If anyone wants to get a petition started to hold this dude accountable for ripping off people who already pay through the nose for gear, then im in. The film industry is already full of scam merchants but this one hides behind steam and its early access bs.

I was so excited about this that I bought the very first alpha the very first day it came out.

A couple of years later I painfully have to admit, that this "game" has little to no value for actual industry professionals. Controls are terrible and you barely have any assets that would make sense in a real production environment. Instead, you get loads of medieval assets, sword-fighting animations, and a whole lot of nonsense that nobody's ever gonna need. They were probably readily available that's why they made it into the game. But you still can't have a character sit on a chair (without playing the air drums) or lie on a bed. I used this tool to previs a short film once and the only way to get the character lying on a bed was using the sword fighting death animation and pausing it once he hit the ground. It's ridiculous.

Please save your money. It seems this tool was abandoned by Matt who now only makes funny videos about his face showing up in UE5. If you're looking for a reliable previs-tool, you'll have to look elsewhere, because Cinetracer isn't it.

Certainly a cool tool, and a good idea.

Certainly (At this time) not worth $80. It's a great previsualization tool, but you would probably be better off using Unreal Engine at this time since it is free and emulates basically what this game is trying to do anyway.

I believe the developer has shifted a lot of his attention towards working on a new Unreal Engine game anyway, so you would be better off learning that system.

For a program with that price, I expect a continuous development. Since 2020, nothing happened and the program is far off from being effective and useful.
Potential is there, but right now, dont buy it.

Dont' just dont. If you're looking for a handy software/game similar to this one just go check out Gmod. There's literally tons of community made mods to help you with creating some well done cinematic shots for your screen board. This had potential but with amazingly slow update its hard for me to recommend it to anyone.

V0.63 Update: Little to no progress made in the latest update. The UI has improved for cameras and set furniture and props. However lighting is still limited and there is no way for me to select a colour tempreture on the light source. On top of this I am now getting a graphical glitch when in full screen on the mac. This application has been in development for well over 2 years now and there has been little progress made in the last year. Absolute fucking joke.
V0.62 Update: Matt has re-added some maps after previously removing them, different sensor sizes have been added to the camera as well as an updated UI however I can still cannot add filters or change the colour temperature on light, the actors are still inconsistent and have limited mocap presets and there is still a limited number of props to use. I still do not think it is worth the hefty price tag and probably never will be. Do not purchase, save your money an consider alternates, like elixxier, instead of purchasing this application.

Cine Tracer is simply a dumbed-down buggy version on UE4 (which is free) so if UE4 is too complicated and you would like its half-made buggy equivalent than buy this program. However keep in mind updates are few and far between as it is being developed by one man who doesn't fully know what he is doing so expect the content to be at the minimum for a long time. On top of all that, there have been reports of mac users unable to get it started. The program is dead so save your money and move on.

P.S. I recommend checking out elixxier as a possible alternative.

Seems likes it's dead. Matt had great ambitions, but his inability to focus on important features and create a stable and usable workflow has plagued this software since the beginning. The program is worse than it was upon and release and is now nearly unusable. Not worth the money as it's no longer a tool. It's just a cool proof of concept that never made it off the ground.

Hello, I just bought this storyboard tools and absolutely love it. However I think it needs 2 additional feature to make it a game changer.

1. Importing your own obj object and fbx.
2. An image plane that can be textured with our custom images with the capability of modifying the texture UV and to turn on and off the reflection (If it needs to be matte and not interact with existing light)

With these two capability, I think cine tracer possibility are endless since now you can import custom object from the internet and match the background with your existing set. If you can, please consider prioritizing this so that it can be used in any condition. The ability of animating the props is also great (I think you should also make a recording function as well in the future) but its not as important as those two I mentioned.

Thank you so much for your hard work!

Like most have said, this is a great app in the making, it just isn’t quite there yet. I suppose it depends on who’s using it, but as a cinematographer, I’m asking myself why there’s a full-fledged character posing system when there isn’t any bounce? Why are there different shape rooftops when I can’t simply build a simple square room at a given LxWxH? If this is primarily a cinematography tool, the priorities seem a bit out of order.

Biggest issue: it would make much more sense to have a camera’s view constantly Picture-in-Picture at the corner of the screen while you light. Rather than having to re-enter it all the time (and risk accidentally changing the framing). And maybe a hotkey to change cameras if you have more than one.

Other issues:
-No diffusion? No nets?
-No fresnel lights? No China balls? No 1x1 LED panels? Perhaps a single LED panel that could be resized would be best. This could apply to flags as well, soft boxes, etc.
-Free camera mode is great. The other cameras should all behave in the same way.
-The ability to turn off a light while preserving it’s intensity would be helpful. Also nice would be the ability to group lights, so you can control or turn off multiple fixtures at once.
-Camera white balance would be cool.
-Auto-generating a lighting plan would be an amazing feature.
-UI is obviously a work in progress so I won’t be too harsh, but there needs to at least be feedback when capturing a camera shot.
-If some characters have better shaders, that should be made clear in the character picker. Perhaps more generally, it should be clear what aspects of the app are “accurate” and which aren’t.
-Undo button please!

Overall it can be frustrating but it’s fun to use. I look forward to this tool maturing and becoming part of my everyday toolkit.

For the high price it has now it is not worth it, most features dont work. The storyboards will turn blank at random and will crash sometimes. I hope it gets better in the future and maybe ill give it another try.

I absolutely love the idea of this sim. But the price point is a a bit steep for what it its offering. The photo metrics of the lamps are completely off. A little more time should be put into developing the different fixtures. On the topic of lighting fixtures there aren't enough to choose from. I work in the film and television industry as a grip, there should be more options for flags,diffusion, etc. In regards to laying dolly track that needs more work too.,

I have high hopes for this software. its fun to play with lighting, I hope this advances to the ability we have on set. I would really like to see the ability to be able to assign DMX512 values to the fixtures so that using ARTNET you could control each device from a lighting console.

Hey Matt,
Wish there is a key or a way can minitor the cam(s) anywhere in the map instead walking/jetpacking back to the cam position then enter the cam.

some other suggestions,

- need high rez charater skin, sometime I thought cam is out focus but then realize it's the resolution of the skin.
- X,Y,Z object placement is bit hard to controll.
- Rig-Cam control needs some simplification, don't mind use another set of keys for dolly movement. so can controll camsetting and rig movement at same time, instead hitting V key to swith interface.
- This one I'm not sure yet, but seems lighting effect in game (real time) is rendered differently from the shots taken in cam.

keep it up! good worK.

RJ

Game has a big potential, at current stage it's good but it's lacking more resources and there are minor bugs and glitches as expected from a just released early access game, but I recommend trying it our prior jumping into conclusions, price tag is a bit salty but I believe in Matt's work and I'm considering this as investiment since this can help me be a better cinematographer, for someone working in the industry this will pay itself in a few gigs.