Intricate cutscenes, in unity ?

Hi,

I've been wondering how large cutscenes, where animation is important are constructed in unity.

This scene from bioshock for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuIT5uIiYcg

Elizabeth walks over to an orange (or something), picks it up, then kind of, skips, over to the kid and passes it to him.

My question is, is this all modelled in external software before unity?

So far i've been using uSequencer, animating the transform first, then cueing animations such as walk at the start that exist on the object, to make it seem like it's walking somewhere. Although in scenes where the animation is that intricate, how is it done?

It seems like it would be painstaking to do scenes like the example, in the way I have been doing my sequences.


Thanks for any advice

 

That scene in BioShock was probably animated primarily in their character animation software (Maya or whatever software was used, which I will henceforth refer to as "Maya" regardless for simplicity); picking up things could be done in half a dozen different ways, but I suspect it was probably animated as a transform in Maya as well. If you wanted to, you could add animation events within Unity that tell the character "pick up that orange now" (parent it to her hand) and another to transfer it wherever else.

Unity has powerful and versatile animation authoring tools, and you can do a lot with them (except for IK, which character animators usually take advantage of heavily, which is why I think that scene was done largely in Maya). There's probably a copy of the scene in Maya, and the animator built that animation in that scene, then exported the animation to the engine without the scene.

 

Hi, I have just watched this clip, it is a fixed cutscene that the actors and place are all fixed, so this is relatively easier, compared to those actions like the player jumps off the rails and hit away the enemies in bioshock.

But as you mentioned, there're still many complexities. If you animate Elizabeth alone in Maya, you will have to switch between Maya and Unity again and again to
1. try to match the walking path in Maya and in the Unity Scene;
2. raise the arm in Maya to hold the non-existent apple;
3. sync the actions of Elizabeth and the boy to pass over the apple;
4. sync the facial animation with the song;
5. do it all again when anything changes. Apple position, actor positions, timing, song length, etc.


It would be much easier if animator animates the character and make the cutscenes altogether in UnityEditor.
1. WYSIWYG, see the result immediately with every change;
2. With all the actors and the scene before you, you won't have difficulty to animate Elizabeth to hold the apple or pass it to the boy;
3. No more software switching, no more animation exporting and importing work, save the time and be more creative.
4. One timeline, integrate animations with other Unity components easily. (Camera-path, Audio, Fx, Light, etc.)

Have a look at this cutscene web-demo below,
Well, I'm no pro animator, so be easy on some unnatural poses.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1126224/Skele/CC2/CC2.html


If you're interested, check out more info and demos about how you can make animation/cutscene in UnityEditor with FK/IK support.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/240996-RELEASED-Skele-The-Bone-Manipulator
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/16899

 

Thank you for the great response!

Yeah, I was thinking it would be way too much work to animate them all separately and bring them back and forth.

Your editor looks like exactly what I was looking for! Just one question though, is it possible to animate multiple objects into the same 'scene'/animation etc.. so I'm not trying to match timelines separately for every object?

 

Thank you for the response StartManta, I was thinking it might be inside of proper 3d software. I just wanted to make sure before I go off on a tangent.
Cheers again!

 

Absolutely, take the above cutscene as example, the robot, the human, the camera, the motion blur effect, the title gui, the sound, all in one animation.
We do things in a unity way : )