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Question Creating a camera sequence with several camera fbxs using timeline?

Discussion in 'Timeline' started by beastlymonkey27, Nov 5, 2020.

  1. beastlymonkey27

    beastlymonkey27

    Joined:
    Nov 23, 2019
    Posts:
    2
    Hello all,

    This is a cross-post, I apologize for the spam but I think my question fits both Timeline and Cinemachine forums.

    This might have a completely obvious solution, but I really can't seem to find anything that works.

    I'm creating a film in Unity and right now I'm trying to export my cameras from Maya to Unity. There are 30 scenes in total which means I have 30 camera FBXs. I was hoping to utilize the timeline, and possibly Cinemachine to put these 30 camera shots into a single camera.

    Ultimately though I just want to push play and have the cameras play 1 by 1 and switch seamlessly until the film ends, by any means necessary.

    Also is it possible to scale the camera shots to their duration, as you would for any other animated file by pushing "C".

    Thanks!
     
    beastlymonkey27, Nov 5, 2020
    #1

  2. gekidoslayer

    gekidoslayer

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2016
    Posts:
    134
    There is a couple of ways to set this up, but the most straightforward is that the camera fbx files will import just as normal animation tracks - with the exception that they have a camera in the hierarchy instead of a skinned mesh etc.

    so the steps are:

    1) add the 30 camera objects into your scene
    2) make an activation AND animation track for each camera
    3) drag the animation for the camera onto their corresponding track and align them into the desired order.

    This will turn on the camera nested in the object hierarchy, and play the animation from the fbx

    I've attached a screenshot of a similar setup

    FBXCamera.png
     
    gekidoslayer, Nov 5, 2020
    #2
    beastlymonkey27 likes this.

  3. gekidoslayer

    gekidoslayer

    Unity Technologies

    Joined:
    Sep 27, 2016
    Posts:
    134
    the second way to handle this is to use cinemachine to replace the maya cameras in the hierarchy with cinemachine virtual cameras - this is potentially more confusing to set up at first, but has a number of benefits (you get the keyframed maya cameras PLUS the benefit of cinemachine driving post processing / adjusting framing as needed, clip blending as well)

    the setup looks similar, with an additional cinemachine track for the vcams
     
    gekidoslayer, Nov 5, 2020
    #3