Cutscenes In Unity, Part 2: Creating The Camera Shot

Where the camera is seeing the world from is vitally important to cutscene design, though easy to overlook. Let’s set up the camera shots.

Today’s Objective: Set up the cutscene camera/s to capture the action that will happen in the cutscene.

Setting up Cinemachine:

With John and Darren in position for the cutscene, we now need a camera or two to capture them!

I’m using Unity’s Cinemachine package because it makes using cameras in a professional way so much easier. Install it through the Package Manager.

Go to “Window/Package Manager” and search for Cinemachine in the Unity Registry

Using Cinemachine:

Cinemachine can create and use many different types of cameras, but I will be using the Virtual Cameras for this cutscene.

In my Scene view, I move the editor camera to a position and viewing angle I want to create a Virtual camera at, because CM cameras are created at the editor camera’s position.

Moving into approximate position

Create the Virtual Camera

The Virtual Camera is placed at the position and rotation of your editor camera

Now I create a new empty GameObject to act as the Virtual Camera’s LookAt target:

The camera will now always (be forced to) look at the target when in use, making animation and camera angles a bit easier.

I also get rid of the Virtual Camera’s aiming deadzone:

The Result:

In the next post, I’ll be animating the camera and target.