Rockstar Games gave Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online the Rockstar Editor, a full suite for recording gameplay, placing cameras and cutting the footage into finished videos. Red Dead Redemption 2 never got one and players have longed for it since the game came out in 2018. Years later, a modder has now built the replacement Rockstar never shipped.
The tool is called Redemption Editor. It comes from Vitor Rossignolli working with Desmond and Levi. Rossignolli announced the first public build on October 29, a free and open-source editor that runs in Red Dead Redemption 2 Story Mode on PC. A long presentation video shows it off with cinematic footage and professional voice-over by Erika-Lee, over an interface styled to look like Rockstar’s own tools.
For a fan made tool, its features are quite robust. The Redemption Editor records the whole scene around you. captures characters in their outfits and expressions, horses down to their tack, muscles and sweat, the wagons and trains, the props and guns, the explosions and blood, the weather, the sky and the time of day. The recording holds the engine state rather than pixels, then replays it on puppets you build a shot around.
From there it works like a director suite. You drop camera markers, fly free or orbit cameras, attach them to characters, bones or vehicles and blend between shots with cuts, smooth or spline moves. Slow motion, depth of field, camera shake and field-of-view changes are all there. When the edit is done, you export it as a video with the game’s own audio, with GPU encoding and real motion blur.
This is a first public release, an early-access build the team says is stable through months of testing, combat especially, though they expect bugs and direct all reports to GitHub. It also only runs in Story Mode and is not built for Red Dead Online, another rare tragedy under Rockstar’s belt.
The way it works is that replays take over the world while they run and exiting the replay will reload your last save, so the team advises saving first.
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Scene recording | Captures the full scene as engine state, characters, horses, vehicles, props, weather and more |
| Puppet playback | Replays the recording on inert puppets you can build shots around |
| Director cameras | Free, orbit and attached cameras on characters, bones or vehicles, with cuts and smooth or spline blends |
| Cinematic controls | Slow motion, depth of field, camera shake and field-of-view changes |
| Video export | Renders a video with the game’s own audio, GPU encoding and real motion blur |
| Projects and gallery | Local clip gallery, timeline editing and projects that stitch several clips together |
| Scope | Story Mode on PC only, not Red Dead Online |
| Requirements | Script Hook RDR2, ReShade with add-on support and Vulkan or DirectX 12 |
Redemption Editor is a Script Hook RDR2 script with a ReShade add-on and an editor core, made specifically for the PC version of the game. It needs Script Hook RDR2, a ReShade build with full add-on support and either Vulkan or DirectX 12, with Vulkan preferred for export. The full build and setup notes are on Nexus Mods. The source code is on GitHub under an open licence.
Of course, none of this is official. Redemption Editor is a fan project with no involvement from Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive. Red Dead Redemption 2 remains their trademark. It fills a gap the community has flagged for years, from players asking about a director mode to long threads calling for an editing feature.
https://x.com/v_rossignolli/status/2115781775582531614
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