Hello world!
I’m working on a cutscene and could use some help. Here’s what I’m trying to achieve:
- Cutscene Setup: I have a static virtual camera focused on a spaceship that warps into the center of the frame (pointing at the “face” of the ship).
- Gameplay Transition: Once the warp animation completes, I’d like to smoothly blend to a FreeLook camera that orbits around the ship. This FreeLook camera is positioned behind the ship to transition into gameplay seamlessly.
The Problem:
I’m using Timeline and Cinemachine for this. When I create a CinemachineShot in the Timeline, I click the “Create” button to add a new virtual camera. Unity generates a new GameObject named “Virtual Camera,” but it doesn’t assign it to the shot automatically.
When I try to manually drag and drop the “Virtual Camera” GameObject into the shot’s inspector field, Unity won’t allow it. I’m stuck here and unsure how to proceed.
Has anyone encountered this issue? Any advice on how to fix it or better approaches to achieving this cutscene-to-gameplay transition?
Additional Note: I have a screenshot showing the drag-and-drop issue if that helps clarify.
Thanks in advance for any guidance!
The way to blend out of your cutscene to the gameplay camera is to set the “ease out duration” field of the last CinemachineShot. That will be the blend time to the game camera.
I can’t repro the issue of the “Create” function not assigning the new virtual camera to the field - for me it does. Also I have no problem dragging something into it. What version of CM are you using?
Hi @Gregoryl,
It’s 2022.2.17f1. I must say that a few months ago I upgraded the version form 2019.xx.xx to this one, and had zero issues.
I also received an email from my bug report, and yes I was told that this is a bug. However, when reading the description, it was a Unity bug and not a Cinemachine bug. (Sorry, I was so stupid to delete that email).
Now I’m lost and blocked and I’m not sure how to proceed. Is there another way to reach the same result I need? In the meantime I try to upgrade again, and hopefully that makes the trick.
Best regards
In addition to the Unity version, could you also tell me what version of Cinemachine you have installed? You can find that info in the Package Manager.
You should definitely upgrade Unity to an LTS version, say the latest 2022.3. We don’t support non-LTS legacy versions. The drag&drop issue will very likely disappear.
Hi, I upgraded to 2022.3.55f1. No behavioural change. My Cinemachine version is 2.10.3 (November 07, 20242.10.3) which seems to be the latest. @Gregoryl
I’ve read this in the package manager: IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are upgrading from the legacy Asset Store version of Cinemachine, delete the Cinemachine asset from your project BEFORE installing this version from the Package Manager.. I’m not sure what this means in practice, but for sure I haven’t done anything special.
Don’t worry about the notice, it only applies to projects upgrading from a very very old version of Cinemachine, one that was published before the Package Manager even existed.
When you open your project, do you get any errors in the Unity console?
Absolutely no errors 
Is it possible that the project got corrupted somehow? Because I’m dealing with another bug, I just remembered, that doesn’t allow me to have clips with specific name length. If I type a longer name by keyboard, then around 6-7 chars Unity crashes. The workaround is copy-pasting the long name from somewhere else like Notepad++. However this bug is non-blocking compared to my current one which prevents me from creating complex cutscenes altogether.
Is it possible to restore / rebuild the project?
You can try deleting the Library folder then re-opening the project.
I upgraded to Unity 6 including Cinemachine from version 2.x to 3.x. The problem is still there.
I’m also sharing a GIF where I show that existing virtual cameras cannot be assigned to the shot, same for new ones created with the “create” button.
is it possible to escalate this issue? Unity is in a broken state, and I don’t want to waste 5 years of hard work because of a ridicoulus bug…
Follow-up: I’m not sure how to reproduce this, but I’ve got an error message in the console a couple of times. Here it’s the screenshot.
I’m a little confused about which versions you’re using. Your error screenshots are showing unsupported versions, while your other post is saying you’ve upgraded to U6.
Let’s stick with a single version.
Can you make a test project with U6 that shows the issue and send it to me? That’s the most efficient way to escalate. As I said, I can’t repro the issue here.
Summary: the version of the project is 2022.2.17f1. it doesn’t matter if I update to U6 and Cinemachine 3, I can reproduce the same bug 100% of the times.
So yeah, let’s stick to U6, although switching to CM3 will break entirely my camera scripts. It’s not ideal, but let’s do that.
What are the next steps?
How can I share the project to you privately? Of course, I don’t want to share the project and the code base publicly, especially considering that you cannot reproduce the issue yourself.
You can upload it somewhere and DM me a link. Delete the Library folder first (Unity will regenerate it when the project is opened).
Then, give me precise repro steps for what scene to open and what to do in order to repro the issue.
The error is happening because you’re editing the object in the Assets folder, and when you do that, there is no scene context in which to create the vcam.
You can tell by looking at the tracks: there are no bindings:
Instead, try editing the timeline from the in-scene object:
When you do that, you’ll see the bindings appear for the tracks. Now, you can create and assign virtual cameras to the Cinemachine shot.
I would call this a UX bug in the inspector, but the workaround is simple. We will log an issue for it.
I’ll test it myself. It’s very confusing. Why can’t I see the references if the scene is currently open? What’s the practical use of having this behavior, one view from the perspective of the timeline file, and one from the scene?
Also, it’s bad that the create button functionality is half broken but no hint is given to the user. I think that the create button should be hidden and that the timeline should be uninteraclable. Warning messages are also welcome we a quick fix.
Yes, the inspector UX should better reflect what is going on here. We’ve opened an issue to fix this.
