What is the Follow Feature in Cinemachine Virtual Cameras?

Chris Hilton
2 min readDec 12, 2021

Objective: To discuss the Follow field feature that is available under the CinemachineVirtualCamera Component in Unity.

Compared to the Look At feature (which simply rotates the camera towards a target and works with the Aim feature settings), the Follow feature refers to the target game object that the Unity Camera will move with. This Follow feature works in conjunction with the Body settings on the CinemachineVirtualCamera component, using this target to update Unity’s camera position.

E.g. Below I have introduced a simple capsule and a new virtual camera into the scene and I have dragged this capsule game object into the Follow field below as shown. Further to this, I have placed the virtual camera in a position in front of the capsule (0, 10, 15) on the X, Y and Z co-ordinates.

CinemachineVirtualCamera Component Settings

And it looks something like this:

Virtual Camera Placed in Front of Capsule

Notice now that when I move the capsule in the scene that the virtual camera is going to stay in the offset position in front of the capsule, essentially following the target around:

Virtual Camera following the Follow target

If you were to leave the Follow field empty, the Unity camera would end up using the virtual cameras position (transform). You might choose to do this if you were looking to animate the virtual camera through Timeline.

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