Unity Cinemachine: A Complete Self Guide

Overview

If you are someone who loves cameras & have shot a lot projects both in games & real life, Cinemachine is specifically designed for you.

Adam Myhill – Head of Cinematics, Unity came up with the idea, to make storytelling fun, fast & iterative, so the users can create shot sequences with the power of procedural cameras. He wanted to establish a relationship between the cameras & their subject so they would act as an army of little robots, ready to follow their instruction and that’s how Cinemachine was born.

That being said, today I hope to share my learnings on how one can make their own Unity Cinemachine Video.

Today, we would be covering the following topics:

Introduction To Unity Cinemachine:

Cinemachine is a complete unity package that consists of steps to make cutscenes, film video, virtual cinematography and more. Cinemachine is also used in-game camera handling without scripting camera behaviors. There are in total 2 different versions available.

1. Cinemachine for Games:

For using the cinemachine, speed of game development is high. It is easy to use for gaming, for example, FPS(first-person shooter) to follow a camera, any story game to make a scene and play a video for that game also supports 2D and 3D platform.

2. Cinemachine for Film And Video:

It’s also easy to use cinemachine to make a film or video. It supports many features of camera motions for example, tracking, dollies, shake, etc. you can change your animation after set up the layout in unity. you can create dynamically adjusts your shots.

How to get started?

1. Download and install Unity. (2017.1) or higher version (Recommended)
2. Open or Create a new 3d project.

3. Go to the Window in package manager.
4. Search or find the name cinemachine, and install package.

5. Create an empty Gameobject and name it Timeline.

6. Open Timeline Window

7. Select TimelineObject And Click On to Create in Timeline window and save.

8. Delete timeline animator because we do not need it.

9. Drag and Drop Object or Character in Timeline for Animation.

10. Right-click and select animation for your object.

11. Record Animation If you want.

12. Now add a Cinemachine brain to your Main Camera

13. Create Virtual Camera from Cinemachine Window

14. Select virtual camera and take any shot in the scene window and click to Move to view and align with view of virtual camera.

15. Drag and drop a focus point in lookat and follow in virtual camera.

16. Create a second virtual camera from cinemachin window
17. Create another shot and drag and drop a focuspoint to look at in second virtual camera.

18. Drag and drop a main camera in timeline window to create a Cinemachin track.

19. Drag all the virtual camera to an cinemachine track and play.