Hello- I’m an experienced professional animation filmmaker- One of my feature films did Sundance and won awards and all that so I’m in no way new to film making.
I also make games and know Unity very well. Here’s a recent game I made that makes animations.
Anyhow, I’m making a new feature film in Unity called “M Doll” that will be completed in a few months.
Here’s a test clip to get an idea on what it will look/sound/feel like.
Here’s the making of site if you want to follow along. I do my best to share the process to help others make their own films with Unity.
I’m making the film alone so you’ll get the perspective of the smallest studio possible making a full length animated film in Unity with a budget of under $1000 usd.
Here’s my three other animated feature films so you can see that I’ve done this before I must say that through leveraging the power of Unity and what is available on the asset store, this will be my best looking and best animated film yet.
If you have any questions about how I’m making this film in Unity etc please feel free to post your questions here. Thanks!
I extended the CameraShot class so now I can control the Depth Of Field, Bloom, Color Grading, lens distortion on a SHOT BY SHOT basis inside Slate without messing with Overrides or multiple Post effect volumes etc-
I also extended the Depth of field controls so I can use a gameObject as a target to always be in focus like a super camera man
By using it like this inside of Unity its like I have my professional 3d animation program(Cinema 4d), my video editor(Premiere Pro) and my effects program(After effects) all inside Unity and its all realtime
If you want to make your movie with Unity there has never been a better time than now.
Working on heavy scenes has really slowed my pc down as I only have a 1070ti-
I’m rendering at 4k and all the models have 4k textures-
By working with a lower preview resolution in the game view (2048 x 858) and by switching to a quality setting with lower res textures (1/4 res) I’m able to now work really fast. The viewport literally flies now.
Unity Recorder will allow you to automatically render at a custom res so that will auto toggle itself up to 4k at render time.
I made this simple script so the Quality settings will also auto-toggle when Recording in Unity recorder- it will switch back to low res when recording has stopped.
A note to people wanting to make films with Unity-
Unity cannot make your film for you- it doesn’t matter what assets you buy, they cannot create a story for you.
Cinemachine is great but it cannot teach you cinematography or how to direct.
If you do not learn storytelling and filmmaking you will just be making demo reels or music videos with Unity.
Unity is amazing tech, tech helps you make films faster, easier and cheaper but it cannot make a film for you.
So if you are trying to make a film with Unity but have not learned the basics of storytelling, cinematography, or directing you need to learn those things before you can make a “film” with Unity IF you expect it to not be complete garbage that no one else but you is willing to watch for longer than 15 seconds
Here is a silent scene from the film- no sound fx/design yet
73 minutes of the film have been completed in about 2.5 months of production by a single artist.
Here are the workflow stats through 73 minutes of the film.
Number of completed storyboard pages per day: 1.2 pages/day
Number of completed shots per day: 15.2 shots/day
Number of completed film minutes per day: 1.5 minutes/day
By looking at the numbers the finished film will be about 105 minutes in length and take one more month to complete.
This is with a SINGLE artist, if this was scaled up to 3-4 artists a studio could realistically create 3-4 animated feature films a year this way.
For our next film we will hire additional artists and most likely use HDRP, though we are going to give Unreal Engine a good hard look to see if that would be better suited to making films the way we are now.
The film is finished- just waiting on the musicians working on the soundtracks(doing 4 soundtracks)
Here’s another trailer
In the meantime we are updating our game that makes animations “Nightmare Puppeteer” and started on our next animated feature film we will also make in Unity. We tested Unreal 5 but found it too buggy for our use, also the lack of C# script is a big minus for us.
Final trailer for our new animated feature film made in Unity to be released in a few months
For fun we used our game that makes animations “Nightmare Puppeteer” to make a crazy animated feature film in a single week recently- you can watch it here
I must say that through leveraging the power of Unity and what is available on the asset store, this will be my best looking and best animated film yet.
