My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Complete Level Cutscene-Block the scene and Animate the Actors

Objective: Set the scene up by positioning Darren in front of the escape door, and positioning the Main Camera according to the Director’s notes. Also, create a Timeline and Animation Track to animate Darren attempting to open the door.

Darren positioned and animated to show him escaping successfully.

To start blocking the scene we need to see the Director’s notes on how they want the scene to be presented. As we see in the notes, the Director wants the camera to shoot from an angle and from a distance to see Darren’s hand reaching for the doorknob.

In Scene View, drag the Win_Level_Cutscene prefab object into the scene and place Darren in front of the door. Make sure Darren’s feet are touching the floor and rotate him to face the door.

Darren added and rotated in front of escape door for this cutscene.

We’re going to test the animation by playing it to see how close his hand is to the handle of the door.

Test the animation to position Darren to turn the door handle.

Since his hand didn’t look properly placed to turn the handle, we paused the game and moved Darren into the position where his hand is over the handle. Then, we’re going to head over to the Transform component, click on the 3 dots menu, and Copy Component Values. We will stop the game, then go back to the Transform component and Paste Component Values.

Copied and pasted component values to reposition Darren correctly.

Before moving on to the Timeline, let’s organize this cutscene. Rename the Win Level Cutscene to Actors which will represent Darren as the actor for this scene. Create a new empty game object and name it Level_Complete_Cutscene. Make sure to change the Transform Position to zero. Last, move the Actors object inside of its new parent Level Complete Cutscene.

Organized cutscene game object to a new Level Complete Cutscene game object.

We need to create a new Timeline for Level Complete Cutscene by adding the Timeline using Window->Sequencing->Timeline. Click on the Create button and place the new Level Complete Timeline playable file inside the Timeline folder within the Great Fleece Game.

Timeline created for the Leve Complete Cutscene.

In Timeline, add an Animation Track and drag the Actors game object into its slot. We need to find the animation clip that will play in the Timeline itself. We can do this by clicking on the Actors object, then double-clicking on End_Level controller inside of the Animator component. In the Animator tab, click on the End Level Cutscene state and look at which animation clip was used for this state in the Inspector next to the Motion setting.

Click back on the Level Complete Cutscene object and head back to Timeline. Click on the 3 dots menu in the Animation Track and select Add from Animation Clip. Select the animation for this track which in this case will be the End Level Cutscene animation.

Animation Track created for the Actors game object to play the End Level cutscene animation clip.

After looking at the notes, Darren’s position needs to be rotated a little bit less to show his right hand and face more according to the Director’s vision. We rotated Darren’s position by almost ten degrees less than original.

Darren’s position rotated to show his right hand and face more.

When we play the animation, we can see Darren’s right hand on the doorknob and face more clearer than the original setup.

Darren position playing with new adjustment to his rotation.

Now that we Blocked the Scene and have Darren’s animation setup, next will be Composing the Shot with virtual cameras.