Working with clips from Different Scenes and Sequencing them

I’m not sure if this question should go in the Cinemachine forum or Timeline forum… so I will try it here. Sorry for it being a bit long, I just wanted to be thorough. Thanks in advance if you can give me some guidance/insight on this.

Say I want to make a cut-scene or a trailer… and that cut-scene or trailer needs to have some “clips”/shots from different Unity scenes/levels of my game… that have different environments… how would I do that?

To be more specific… say I have a car scene that is on one scene of my game… and I want to make a 10 second clip of that (ie. record the characters, animations, the environment, etc.)… and then I have another 5 seconds of a panning camera move of my character walking across another environment that I have in another Unity scene/level… and I have some other “clips” from other Unity scenes/levels of my game… and I want to edit all of those together to make a 30 second or 60 second cut-scene or trailer.

Now, in the “real world” ie. when making movies… you would take a camera crew and your actors to each scene… “film” or record it… after you’re done taking all of those shots you would have a bunch of clips… that you would then take into something like Adobe Premier Pro to edit and finish it off so you have yourself final 60 second trailer or cut-scene.

I think Cinemachine / Timeline can do what I need but from the tutorial videos I have seen… you only make a “clip” (clip in this context being a recorded scene you made ie. in “real life” you took your camera and recorded something) based on the scene you have up in your Unity editor at that current time. If that’s the case, how do you piece in the various “clips” you made from difference Unity scenes to make a trailer or cut-scene? I guess another way to ask it is how do you record various “clips” from different Unity scenes and then sequence them (edit them), so you can tell your story?

Thanks

 

There is a video component, that can play straight-up video clips:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/VideoPlayer.html

 

Thanks for the reply but not really what I was asking about. I'm asking about making clips from Unity scenes so I can create a cutscene and/or trailer from it. That link is basically about bringing in videos into your game... I'm trying to make one from scenes in my game... and I think timeline/cinemachine are the tools - just not sure if they are.

 

Yes, they can sequence your scene and control your camera, but the other component you need is a way to record the frames. Unity has an official one called Recorder (I think it is in github, if not on the asset store). There is a free one I like called Render Monster.

The workflow is called "offline rendering". It basically slows Unity down and writes each frame to disc. You compile it into the video clips and edit.

 

I'm familiar with Recorder... but the quality outputted by that and then put back into the game is of less quality than what timeline/cinemachine produces. That's not the solution I'm looking for. I don't think you're getting what I'm asking. Thanks for giving the input though.

 

LOL

 

Render Monster seems to produce high quality images... but it's not what I'm asking about. I'm asking about TIMELINE and CINEMACHINE. Long story short... the core question is how do you sequence "shots" from different Unity scenes using those 2 assets.

 

And thanks for telling me about Render Monster... it looks like I can use that with some other use-cases... and it also appears I can use Render Monster... export out a "clip".... and then import those sequenced PNG's into Adobe Premiere - correct?

 

One other thing I noticed about Render Monster is it seems to work best with scripted gameplay/animations... ie. the asset developer said it doesn't do well if you're trying to record "active gameplay"... ie. someone playing the game.

 

Ok, the gap in communication (I think) is what you seem to believe Timeline and Cinemachine are for.

Cinemachine is a fancy camera. It points at objects, it follows the character, it "bobs and weaves" like it is handheld. You can have 1 main camera, and a lot of Cinemachine references that will take over the camera when instructed (for instance, when a player crosses a threshold, it tuns on a camera inside the room that is pointing at the door). This can look "cinematic" but it is a system for controlling a bunch of camera angles within a live game.

Timeline is an event sequencer. It can play an audio track, and a character animation, and turn on some of those Cinemachine cameras at specific times. It looks like a NLE video editor where you can slide media elements around a timeline, but in this case the "elements" that are being sequenced are scene events (play an audio track, switch to Camera B). You can also use Timeline to play a video, or to launch other timelines. Again, this is all "live" in a game.

The part that is not being explained, is that we don't know specifically what you are trying to do, or how resource-intensive it is. It sounds like you want to show quick moments from various scenes, like a movie trailer. You have 2 options.

1. Load up the live game scenes all at once and make Cinemachine and Timeline control your "live cutscene" as a sequence of triggered events that are happening "live" in the game. Everything is live.
2. Render out your "pre-recorded cutscene" clips as a PNG sequence which you can use Premier to edit/compress into a quality video clip. Use MoviePlayer component to play the pre-recorded cutscene in your game. (Only the video is playing. You don't need to load all the various game scenes, figures, and backgrounds)

Despite Unity making this push to take over the video animation space as a production tool, Unity is still a game machine first. It is not really designed to be an offline renderer so you will need to use the tools that exist to "build" the renderer you want – this is different from how people build games. While Unity is rendering out each frame, it is no longer playing at game framerates. In fact you can make Unity render at a much higher quality because it is not in real-time. Unity can take the time it needs to render a very un-optimized scene with heavy effects – too slow to play as a game. The Render Monster page is explaining that you can't "play the game" with the joystick or whatever, as you would with a normal game. You will need some kind of automation (timeline) to take control while Unity is stepping through each frame and writing to disc.

 

Or render using octane within unity.