Space Engine offers us an opportunity to traverse the vast distances of our universe—from orbiting alien worlds to facing the most unnatural beasts of the cosmos. Sometimes, you may want to record your discoveries to share online or preserve them in your library of exploration findings. A common use case for this tool is creating stunning cinematic and documentary shots. Whether it’s to capture your audience's attention or provide visually captivating imagery, control over Space Engine's camera is essential for capturing your vision.

Thankfully, Space Engine Pro introduces the Camera Path Editor, allowing us to create precise camera paths. These paths can be tweaked (nearly) at will, saved, loaded, and ultimately recorded for your audience.

This guide covers the fundamentals of the Camera Path Editor and provides a brief overview of the Video Recorder to help you start crafting your own cinematic journeys across the universe.

After getting the Pro DLC of Space Engine, you gain access to the tools section on the main menu. This is where you will find all the tools provided with the Pro version of Space Engine, including the Camera Path Editor.


When you click on it (or any tool, for that matter), the simulation launches at the latest location you were in when you last exited the game. However, unlike the casual interface of the simulation, a new window appears that you can move around. This is the Camera Path Editor. While it may seem overwhelmingly simple, it provides just enough functionality to help you start crafting your cinematic vision within the simulation.

Here’s a brief explanation of the window and what each control does:

• The Load & Save buttons: These buttons allow you to save and load paths you’ve created. Straightforward and essential.
  
• Name input: This is where you name your shot. It’s useful for organization and works seamlessly with the load and save functions.
  
• Add points automatically: There are two ways to create a path—automatic and manual. For this tutorial, I’ve chosen to keep this option enabled. I’ll cover the manual method later.
  
• Interval between points: This value dictates how frequently the game adds a point to the path. It’s particularly useful for creating more or less precise paths but only applies to automatic pathing. (You’ll understand why later.)
  
• Replay duration: Sets the playback length of your shot. For example, in the screenshot above, the shot duration is set to 10 seconds.
  
• PosSpline, RotSpline & StereoSpline: These are mathematical functions that define the path's trajectory. I won’t delve into them much here, but you’re free to experiment.
  
• SyncRot: Check this option if you want your path and camera to sync. For example, when you rotate the camera to target something, the path will also sync with your camera’s rotation.
  
• Display path curve: A helpful debug tool that shows your path as a pink dotted line. This line won’t appear in your final recording.
  
• Update curve on the fly: Honestly, I’m unsure about its purpose or inner workings. However, when I enabled it while creating this guide, it broke my path. For now, I recommend leaving it disabled.

The buttons below are straightforward: Record, Stop, Pause, Play, Play and record, and access the recording settings.

Enough talk, I want this guide to be concise and simple. Let's start creating your first path using the automatic process.
Give a name to your shot, check the Add points automatically. Set the Interval between points to whatever, but you should probably go with one, to get one point per second.
Don't bother with the Replay duration here.
Then, click the big, red start recording button.

As soon as you click the record button, a flashy red text will appear in the Camera Path Editor window, reading Recording.
If so, you are correctly recording your path. Go along now and move around. You will automatically create a path following your camera around. When you are done, click the Stop button (square button).
If you need a pause, you can click the pause button (two bars).
When you are done, you can preview the result by playing the shot by clicking the play button (triangle button).
You can tweak the path and how the camera reacts by changing the PosSpline, RotSpline and StereoSpline settings. I'll let you play alone with these settings for now.

When you have found the right shot and the correct settings for the path, you can go ahead and start recording by pressing the play and record button (arrow and red button). If you want, before going into the actual recording, you can click the gear button to open up the recording settings (which I will not glance over here, but here is a screenshot of the window nonetheless.)

Here are two videos showing different results depending on the PosSpline, RotSpline and StereoSpline settings. As said previously, I invite you to take a look and play around by yourself for now.

I will not go over everything, but when opening up the video recording settings, you'll be able to change some things that will affect the end video. You will have the basic video format settings to play with, alongside the framerate of the simulation and of your video, etc. You can have the engine change the settings to Ultra when recording to get the best shots possible. You can also automatically hide the interface and GUI to only have the simulation in the recording, and not everything from Space Engine.

Another part I will soly glance over is the manual process of creating a path. To do so, uncheck the Add points automatically. Set the total duration of your shot in the Replay duration input. Set your Interval between points. Then, when hitting record, you will have to move your camera to a specific location you want, and press the Add point button.
If you have some knowledge of animation, you will have to make a pose-to-pose animation for your camera. Manually go to your new point of interest, align the camera, and add a new point to your path.
This will give you way more freedom, however, it will also require more focus and discipline for the timing and look to be right.