Prod Cost Savings on Cinemachine

Newbie here trying to justify adoption of Unity and Cinemachine where I work. I was wondering if any of the experienced Cinemachine users have some ballpark estimates on time / cost savings by adopting this for video production. My focus is less on game development and more on video production.

Any help or anecdotal experience with using Cinemachine would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

 

From my understanding Cinemachine was originally designed more for film type work.

We've def. found it to be more suited to our film based work than actual game play. I'm not saying that the game play elements lack in any way, just that the suite of tools seem to be more developed in regards to film type work.

Check out the demos and examples. The making of ADAM videos show a lot of the capabilities when coupled with Timeline.

I'm pretty sure that you won't regret switching over to Cinemachine. Are you switching game engines as well? If so, that is a much different question.

 

Thanks very much!

Can attribute a cost reduction to the use of Cinemachine in your film productions?

Not really a game developer, but looking at Cinemachine as a way of reducing VFX costs and improving turn around time.

Thanks,

 

Can’t say honestly as we only started to do film type work since we started using Cinemachine.

There are a lot of “smart” tools in the pack that reduce a great amount set up time.

Have you watched the demos? Are you farmilliar with Unity? I did find cinemachine to be a bit of a paradigm shift in regards to camera work in Unity but once I got my head around it it became very logical and easy to use.

Nathan

 

IMHO for game context:

If the developer isn't skilled enough to roll an AAA quality camera then they'll probably 9 times out of 10 end up with something better by using CineMachine.

Assuming action, not adventure or walking sims.

 

Thanks that's good insight.

 

CM originally came from a games background. Most of the CM modules are specifically for games. That said, we've spent a lot of time on the cinematic stuff and it's proving to save a lot of time on projects.

Probably the biggest benifit of using CM on Layout/Film is that you're not forced to do animations and camera work in a specific order. For example, you can do animations and layout in a traditional way and then change some animations and the cameras will still 'figure it out'.

On the Disney TVA 'Dream' project, Director Simon J Smith said that this totally changed how they worked. It made working much more like on a film set where work didn't have to be done in stages but instead they could be done much more collaboratively. The cameras went down fast and still worked when things were moved around.

We have a little blog post on that. It's more than just saving time, it helps you tell better stories as you're able to experiment with ideas right on the spot to see if they work.

https://unity.com/madewith/baymax-dreams

 

Thanks! That gives me good insight on how to pitch this. Really appreciate it.

 

@ricocamus let me know if you need more info on this. We have some decks and other materials which show how CM has made a big impact in quality and productivity in Animation and game cinematics.

 

Thanks for the offer, I would appreciate anything you could share.

I have been going through the usual youtube tutorials and the Adam series, which have been quite helpful.