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Cinema Director [RELEASED]

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by harrington, Jul 21, 2014.

  1. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Haha. Well we threw the models in as a bonus with Pro Cams. We weren't planning on getting them textured. However, this is something we can add to our roadmap.
     
  2. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    I was looking for a cutscene tool... and I think I found it!! I do have a question in regards to spawn objects such as boxes, or dismembered prefabs (such as the same character with gore added and extra stuff) which I will have to sync carefully, how easy is it to enable such events? I also plan on using things like Popcorn FX and cutscenes for things like throwing moves (i'm making a fighting game) which is a quick cutscences...

    Think like mortal kombat where the fatalities play out, and I want this to work for every character.

    I hope to see how easy it is.
     
  3. harrington

    harrington

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    Glad you found us!

    We have a library of events and actions that do all sorts of things. It is also easy to create your own to do anything you need if you are handy with programming. We can also assist there.

    As for fatalities, I suppose that you would have some button combo which triggers the cutscene. Then you would provide the cutscene the actors (ie, the two fighters) then the cutscene would carry out animations and effects and let you know when it is done playing.
     
    KRGraphics likes this.
  4. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    the hard part is switching out the player models for fatality models which have to use the same material, same damage state, and then seamlessly switch out without sacrificing framerate.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2015
  5. harrington

    harrington

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    I could try an experiment and let you know. I don't imagine that having the cutscene perform this would have any performance impact over doing it during regular gameplay.

    You could potentially just pre-load the prefabs into the scene and enable/disable them (if there was any performance impact).
     
  6. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    I am thinking of doing that...since they will be playing the same animation when I switch it out...
     
  7. pwas

    pwas

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    Hello!
    I have problem with Shot Track in Director Group... I have been playing with that track and everything was fine until perspective camera was used. When I have set orthographic camera (my game is 2D) strange errors appeared:


    What can I do?
     
    Last edited: Feb 5, 2015
  8. harrington

    harrington

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  9. DrewMedina

    DrewMedina

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    I agree with the folks above about paths, it would be amazing to have bezier paths in this tool. Seems to be the only thing missing (I also use camera path animator). is this on your roadmap or any way to integrate the two?
    How are you planning your cutscene shots without seeing a path or controlling its bezier curves? or is it simple waypoints?
     
  10. kikiwunder

    kikiwunder

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    Hi there!

    I was looking at the Blacksmith demo for Unity 5. I know that they're going to eventually release their own Director tool, but I was wondering: Does your tool work in Unity 5, and if so, does it provide an option to render out single frames or sequences of frames?

    Thanks!
     
  11. saucer78

    saucer78

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    This is my biggest reservation right now, considering I'm also looking into uSequencer.

    I purchased Simple Waypoint System a while back - which is very easy to use - but it does not offer animation or event triggers at waypoints. Can anyone comment on the combined functionality of these two products; might SWS integrate well with CD? uSequencer looks to be a little more powerful, but I'm loving the look of the GUI in CD... decisions, decisions.
     
  12. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Bezier paths are on the roadmap and are coming. We have not checked integration with SWS at this point. As for your uSeq comment, I am a bit biased...maybe other's that have CD can comment? ;)
     
  13. TrickyHandz

    TrickyHandz

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    As a Director user I'm going to try to answer as many of the recent questions on this as possible
    Director doesn't use waypoints. Waypoints lend themselves more to AI systems for pathfinding, whereas Director is a visual sequencer. Think of it more along the lines of building a movie clip in Flash or an animation in a 3D modeling program. Everything is driven by key frames and curves in the Director window that manipulate your scene cameras and actors. Although there isn't visualization in the scene view, the Director Editor puts all your information right there for you. There is a lot of new things on the roadmap that was published on the Cinema Suite forums as well, so you can check that out.

    Inside of Director, you can constantly scrub through your cutscene and edit it without ever entering play mode. This is a great feature for planning movement of anything in your scene. Say you have a character traversing a scene and they need to jump over an obstacle. You simply scrub through the scene until the character reaches an appropriate point to begin the jump and place a key frame to call the action. You can even edit non-actor objects in the scene to make sure everything lines up correctly, so positioning obstacles and the like is super simple. You also aren't limited to doing one thing at a time...everything works together. As your character jumps over an obstacle, you can change to a different camera, fire audio cues, start a camera zoom out and much more.

    I haven't had any issues with Director in Unity 5 at all. If you do run into something, the developers are very helpful on their forums (www.cinema-suite.com/forum)...I can't recommend hanging out there enough for anyone interested in any of the Cinema Suite tools. Regarding exporting cutscenes as single frames, there is a way to do that built in. Mitch did a video discussing that very feature here: Feature Spotlight - Cutscene Capturer in Cinema Director.

    I don't own Simple Waypoint System so I can't comment on it directly, however, I have yet to find an asset that I haven't been able to integrate with Director. I've built custom functionality Director so I can access features of other extensions I purchased on the asset store. The API for Director is really straight-forward if you don't mind writing some code. If you aren't a coder, I recommend the Cinema Suite Forums as a go to place to figure out what needs to be done to meet your needs.

    In reference to your considering of uSequencer I will say this. I tried out uSequencer a while back and didn't have the best experience with it in regards to ease of use and stability. When I had to chance to get Director I did and haven't regretted that purchase once. Director simple worked out of the box for probably 90% of my needs. Everything else, I was able to solve by building custom events with the help of the Cinema Suite Devs. To me Director is the go to cutscene/cinematic editor and I have tried several. I continue to be impressed with Director's capabilities. I feel like it is only limited by my imagination. If you can do it in Unity, you can make Director do it for you.
     
  14. IsntCo

    IsntCo

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    Does Cinema Mo Cap use the latest Kinect?
     
  15. alemke

    alemke

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    Is it possible to enable and disable emission of a particle effect with Cinema Director?

    Unfortunately simply enabling and disabling the game object hides any particles that are still around.
     
  16. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Hi there alemke,

    We are currently writing a custom event for triggering particle effects. It will be included in the latest version of Director. We will also post the script here when available.

    Thanks!

    Dan
     
  17. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Not yet. But we are in final testing. Cleaning up filtering options and fixing a few bugs then it will be released.
     
  18. exitsimulation

    exitsimulation

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    Hello!

    Is it possible to access and animate members and variables from my own scripts with Cinema Director?
    I've seen that there is a SendMessage component for Actor Tracks which could act as a kind of work-around but a direct way to access script variables would be more pleasant.

    edit: Ok, found it! You can edit variables with a curve clip. neat! :)
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2015
  19. TrickyHandz

    TrickyHandz

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    @monogon glad you found a solution. Also, if you need to squeeze more functionality out of Director there is a great API for custom events. If you aren't a coder, the Cinema Suite Forums are a great place to go for help.
     
    exitsimulation likes this.
  20. TonyLi

    TonyLi

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    Does this mean the API has been documented now?
     
    exitsimulation likes this.
  21. DanoG

    DanoG

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  22. TonyLi

    TonyLi

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  23. DanoG

    DanoG

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  24. arcdragon1

    arcdragon1

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    Hi, team. i have a trouble about after ending cutscene state.
    i hope that gameobject have kept being enable state, when timeline had ended, after my cutscene enabled gameobject in Global Track.
    now gameobjects state is going back to square oneas soon as cutscene's timeline ended.
     
  25. harrington

    harrington

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    Many actions and events in Director have settings called RevertMode. There is options for both runtime and in-editor-preview. You can select if you would like your GameObject to Revert back to it's initial state or finalize where it is.

    Hope that helps.
     
  26. arcdragon1

    arcdragon1

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    thank you!
     
  27. ArmarageX

    ArmarageX

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    Hi! Just bought your plugin a few days ago, and already have my first cutscene happening already! :) So far its been working really well..!

    I just wanted to ask if theres any way to move multiple tracks on the timeline?
    I have everything all set... but i want to shift the entire cutscene to start e.g. 5 seconds later.... (plus adding some extra bits in the beginning)... but so far it feels i will have to manually shift all tracks individually. Any methods that can hopefully help with that will be great >.<

    Otherwise.. some bugs report:
    In ACTIVE preview mode... changing stuff in a character Animator panel will cause a crash.
    Of course... it doesn't happen if preview mode is not active...
    And the crash happens when i press the STOP button (in an attempt to refresh).
    Hope that helps!
     
  28. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Hi ArmarageX.

    Some good news for you. Please upgrade to the lastest version of Cinema Director that we just released. It will fix the issues mentioned above. You can now select multiple items by either CTRL and click or with box select, then you can move them to a new position by dragging.
     
  29. DanoG

    DanoG

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    [ANNOUNCEMENT] We have released Cinema Director 1.4.0.6

    We are calling this "The organizational release" ;)

    Here's a list of what's new:
    • Playmaker integration.
    • NodeCanvas integration.
    • Sidebar can now be re-sized.
    • Game Objects can now be dragged from the Hierarchy panel into the Director panel to create an Actor Track Group.
    • Track Groups and Tracks can now be renamed/duplicated/deleted in the Director panel by context clicking label.
    • Shift/Ctrl select now multi-selects items in sidebar.
    • Added box-select in working area for timeline items.
    • Added the ability to move multiple selected timeline items.
    • Context clicking in an empty track space now presents Add menu and newly created items are added at that time.
    • Fixed bug where Cutscene sometime's didn't start from time 0.
    • Fixed bug where Cutscenes with same names were not being shown in the Cutscene selection drop down.
    • Fixed bug where CurveClips with same names were not being shown in the Curve Clip selection drop down.
    • Switching the focused Cutscene from the drop down selector causes preview mode to stop.
    • Added option to open the Director panel from Cutscene's inspector, focusing the selected Cutscene.
    • Double-clicking a Curve Clip toggles it between edit mode and done.
    Please make sure to upgrade, or purchase from the Asset Store - https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/19779

    Also, you can now upgrade from Cinema Director to our full product bundle - The Cinema Suite!

    https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/22171
     
  30. Maosoto

    Maosoto

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    Hello. I just update Cinema Director to v1.4.0.6 in Unity 5.1.1f1 and as soon as I try to expand an Actor group with the arrow, I get the error "NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object ". After this is impossible to add new Actor Groups or any other track. Can you please check on this issue?
     
  31. TrickyHandz

    TrickyHandz

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    This problem was brought up on the Cinema Suite Forums here. Quick fix is to delete the Cinema Director folder and re-import from the asset store.
     
  32. Maosoto

    Maosoto

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    Thanks!!! That works!!
     
  33. NightOwlGamingLLC

    NightOwlGamingLLC

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    First off - Cinema Director is an amazingly powerful tool !

    However I have run into a weird issue as I have gotten deeper into my testing. I'm at this point now where if I add a new animation to the controller for one of my actors - it seems to break his Actor Curve Track that I am using to move him around the scene.

    Instead of following the track, the actor will simply sit in his origin playing his walk animation (triggered separately) in place as he is stuck. If I simply delete the new animation clip from his animation controller... then everything works again just fine and he goes back to respecting the x,y,z & rotation of his curve track.

    I've tried many things to try to isolate the cause of this, it seems obviously linked to adding a new animation clip... but that's sort of a brick wall as I need to add more clips ! Any idea as to why this would be happening, or what I could do to resolve it? I saw on the first page something in your patch notes about fixing a bug that makes a curve track animated actor return to its origin... however that sort of sounds exactly like the bug I am still experiencing.

    I just updated CD to the newest version in Asset Store minutes ago so I'm not on an old version. Any help?
     
  34. harrington

    harrington

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    Thanks.

    For the issue, it sounds like maybe your Animator has "apply root motion" enabled, which overrides the curve track. If you can give me a step by step to reproduce it, I can try to figure out a solution.
     
  35. NightOwlGamingLLC

    NightOwlGamingLLC

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    I'm at work now but I'll check when I get home tonight... however it sounds like you just gave me the clue I needed to unravel this issue !


    *EDIT* That was the issue exactly, not sure how I didn't think to check on that. Forest for the trees eh? Thanks again !
     
    Last edited: Jul 14, 2015
  36. TonyT

    TonyT

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    Hi I just have a quick noob question.

    Does Director do scrubbing in playmode? I have a requirement to produce a piece that you can move backwards and forwards in time in play mode. (i.e. it is will be an interactive piece)

    Thanks

    Tony
     
  37. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Unfortunately not at this time.
     
  38. KWaldt

    KWaldt

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    Hello there!

    I picked up the Cinema Suit just today, so please excuse me if I ask obvious questions.
    (I also can't access the online manual, it might be temporary down, or my internet's not playing along.)
    First of, is it possible to copy and paste keyframes? I currently cheat by copy/pasting the component values in the gameobject, but right-clicking in a keyframe and copying it would be more comfortable.
    Also, is it possible to zoom the curve tracks vertically? I can zoom them horizontally, making them broader, but what would be more important would be to have them be taller so that one can be more precise when adjusting the tangents.
    I noticed that I can scale them if I turn "Auto Resize" off, but the line height does not scale along, so that didn't help.

    Also, do you think that you could make the focal length attribute of the camera body keyable? I understand if you won't, since it's unrealistic, but in some cases it can be nice (for example if one wants to render out some scenes which need different focal lengths, in this case one can put all animations on a single camera instead of multiple ones, and then cut and edit it either in a video software afterwards, or in-game with some inbetween shoots).

    Well, thank you for the good work!
    - KW

    Edit: Also, is there a way to change the default behaviour of splines? I'd rather have them be on "auto" on default instead of "flat" at the moment, and selecting every single keyframe to change this is a tiny bit exhausting.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2015
  39. harrington

    harrington

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    Thanks for picking up the suite. I will go through the questions item by item:
    • It is not currently possible to copy-paste individual keyframes. We are continuously improving the curve clip editor, so will for sure add this in the future.
    • You can make the curve clip editor "taller", by clicking on the icon in the sidebar, that looks like two arrows pointing up and down.
    • We are adding "variable lenses", so I can put that focal length suggestion on my TODO list.
    • I can add options to the setting panels to choose defaults.
     
  40. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    Hi ,
    About this great tools i have read some reviews and would want to know the state of one :

    Has curve editor been improved and no more crashing ?
     
  41. DanoG

    DanoG

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    Curve editor has been vastly improved since that review, and very rarely crashes, if ever.
     
  42. Solhart

    Solhart

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    Hello everyone,
    I'm very new here and i'm very new to unity.

    I was wondering if i can use cinema director with google cardboard? will it be possible?
    I want to make an short animation using cinema director and VR google cardboard.
    Thank you
     
  43. harrington

    harrington

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    Cinema Director is a sequencer which is perfect for making short animations. I have not played around with google cardboard, so can't say for sure. If it uses Unity's camera and the google cardboard is just a component of the game object that holds the camera, then it should work no problem. In the other case, Director is extendable so you can create your own way of handling it and we can help with that. Thanks for your interest in Director!
     
  44. Solhart

    Solhart

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    Thank you so much for your reply.
    It would be great if i can make my short animation with this plugin.

    so by default, cinema director can only animate unity's camera? It's not possible to animate the google cardboard camera by default?Is it possible to make a quick time event using this?
    I just wanna confirm before i get my hands on this plugin haha

    Thanks again
     
  45. TonyLi

    TonyLi

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    I've been working with VR recently, and I'm a Cinema Director user. You can animate any transform with a curve, including your VR camera GameObject. If you make your regular camera a child of the VR camera GameObject, you can get an idea onscreen of what the experience will be in cardboard.

    However -- and this has nothing to do with Cinema Director in particular -- it's generally a bad idea to take look control away from the user in VR. It's very disorienting, and the fastest way to induce motion sickness. You might be better off using Cinema Director's other features to play sounds or flash lights somewhere to entice the user to choose to look at something, rather than forcing their vision there.
     
  46. Solhart

    Solhart

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    oo orait i get it. I never thought of that haha.. Orait i'll give it a try then hahaha
    Thx TonyLi
    Thx Harrington

    :D
     
  47. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Hey, Harrington. I'm still looking for assets to use for cutscenes and I will be using UFE... is it possible to hook your asset up to that one for the creation of in game cut scenes?

    Thanks again.
     
  48. harrington

    harrington

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    Cinema Director can animate (Drive transform.position through curves) any GameObject. There is a specific workflow in Cinema Director called a "shot track" where you setup camera cuts. This shot track only works with GameObjects that contain a Camera component.

    As for whether performing cuts in VR is good, I would advise against it. Director would still be ideal for queueing up all the events and actions that the user witnesses however, as Tony mentioned.
     
  49. harrington

    harrington

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    I will email the UFE creator and see if he is interested. Is there something specific you are looking for?
     
    KRGraphics likes this.
  50. KRGraphics

    KRGraphics

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    Yes, I was watching tutorials on Director and I like the deep control of the timeline. I use After Effects so this asset makes me feel right at home. I want to use director to create cinematic animations in game, opening cutscenes for characters (I want to control parts of my character or do an effect that would be tough to do in game), and when UFE adds interactive level transitions, and fatality cutscenes. The Unity Animator will not cut it for me.



    Is this specific enough? :)