My journey becoming a Unity game developer: Complete Level Cutscene-Compose the shot and animate the virtual cameras
Objective: Setup the virtual cameras to capture Darren attempting to escape through the door. Also, make the virtual cameras animate to zoom in on Darren escaping.
Looking at the storyboard, we see the how the scenes are drawn out by the Director looking to start from a distance, then zoom in to Darren as he turns the handle and look back before escaping. To setup this scene, we will need to use 2 virtual cameras to perform the animations of each shot.
Let’s begin with creating a virtual camera name CM Full Shot. Then create an empty game object to hold the virtual cameras name CM Virtual Cameras, and drag the CM Full Shot camera into the CM Virtual Cameras game object.
Inside CM Full Shot game object, drag the Actors object into the Look At slot to set the focus on Darren. In the Body setting change from Transposer to Do Nothing. In the Aim setting, change the Dead Zone Width and Height to center the camera to look at Darren’s hands. Use the Tracked Object Offset to adjust the Soft and Dead Zones view position to be fixed on Darren’s hands.
Inside Timeline, create a Cinemachine Track to contain the Main Camera in it which has the Cinemachine Brain attached to it already. Then right-click on the Timeline and select Add Cinemachine Shot. Drag the CM Full Shot object into the Virtual Camera slot in the Inspector.
Now create another Virtual Camera from Cinemachine and name it CM Close Up. Organize the camera by dragging it into the Level Complete Cutscene object. Drag Actors into the Look At slot, set the Body setting to Do Nothing, and use Aim settings to center the camera’s focus around Darren’s hands. One last thing we want to do is in Scene View, zoom in on Darren to have him in view according to the Director’s notes as this will be the final position when the virtual camera animates. Once the position is set, just use Align to View either under GameObject->Align to View or CTRL+SHIFT+F to set the CM Close Up shot to that viewing in the Game screen.
Also, let’s organize the virtual cameras once more by moving the CM Close Up object into the CM Virtual Cameras.
After playing around with the settings to position the CM Close Up camera’s view, we should have our game view looking something similar to this.
In the Timeline, move the CM Full Shot position to when Darren is about to turn his head which for me was around 3.30 seconds. Right-click in the Timeline, add another Cinemachine Shot, and drag the CM Close Up object into the Virtual Camera slot in the Inspector. If needed, drag the CM Close Up shot to connect with the CM Full Shot in the Timeline. When we play the scene, it should go from the 1st virtual camera to the 2nd virtual camera with no delays.
To add a smoother transition between the cameras, we can merge the CM Close Up camera by dragging it into the CM Full Shot camera. We dragged it about .30 seconds into the CM Full Shot camera.
To give the CM Close Up camera a subtle shake, we will use the Noise setting. In the Inspector, come down to Noise and change the setting to Basic Multi Channel Perlin. From there we went with the Handheld_tele_mild setting and left the presets as is just to make the camera shake ever so slightly to add a little extra to the scene.
This is the final shot for the scene with the camera shaking ever so slightly.
Next will be the last request from the Director’s notes which is to fade in at the beginning and fade out with the Game Over screen appearing at the end of the scene.
