"Bake" scene dynamics into the Timeline.

This is not a Cinemachine question per se, but I think it's pretty relevant. Suppose I want to create a 5-minute long cutscene with several NPCs driven by AI. There are about 15 CM cameras. Let's say I want to get a nice-looking shot at 3 minutes. So every time I do that, I need to wait 3 minutes for the scene to get to that state.

What I'm looking for is a way to "bake" the scene dynamics into the Timeline so that it would be possible to scrub through it just like a video file. I'm guessing that this is not yet possible, but I wonder if you guys have any suggestions as to how to better handle this situation.

PS. I did try GameObjectRecorder(). It "kinda" worked, but not very well, probably because of the large number and the complexity of all the animations that I have in the scene.

 

@username123432 We are working on doing Animation bakes into Timeline tracks. This allows you to bake down anything which is animated into Unity (I think anything with keyfames or state changes) onto a Timeline track

So yes, you will be able to do this, it's coming to the Recorder framework on the Asset Store.

Cinemachine cameras with damping / noise will become standard cameras with keyframes on any frame, becoming non-CM regular cameras which play the same every time.

Huge scenes may need to be baked down in sections. We'll be announcing this feature at GDC this year.

 

Thanks guys for clearing this up! I posted my question without much hope because I can imagine how difficult this would be to implement. But I guess nothing is too hard for the Cinemachine team Can't wait to try this feature!

 

I'll send your props to the Animation, Timeline and DCC teams! They're the dirty wizards behind this one.

 

): They sure are

But seriously, the baking feature would be insanely awesome.

 

Hi Adam! Watched your GDC presentation (youtube). Didn't hear about the baking feature. Did I miss it? BTW, the storyboard feature looks fantastic

 

Hey @username132323232 I didn't talk about the camera baking but it works! That's something we'll talk about for Unite Europe. Videos coming very soon. It works great. I'll share ASAP here.

 

Thank you Adam! Sounds good. BTW, that video (the one with 4 friends) that you showed during the GDC talk looks interesting. I wonder how it was created? Any chance you used camera baking for it?

 

I didn't use camera baking on any of that. We have a whole sequence with tons of cameras but no baking - as we don't need it to go anywhere 'after', it's entirely living in Unity.