The Sherman project Adam mentioned doesn’t work… it kicks off errors (that breaks the timeline stuff and a few other things)… and me and a few others addressed it in another thread someone had… no one from Unity has responded to the issues as of yet.
Also, as you can see from the reviews here (and elsewhere): https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/film-sample-project-130415 like a lot of things it seems with stuff like this from Unity… it’s dated and broken. And on that asset page above… you don’t see one person (in the past year) from Unity responding to the numerous complaints… which is bad form considering it’s a “showcase” asset that they ask people to check out. They seemed to stop paying attention to it well over a year ago.
I’m really trying to stick with Unity as I think it could be a great tool and I really hate being critical of them as I paid thousands of dollars for Unity Store assets and had a paid subscription to Unity and put a lot of time into it but I’m starting to look at or at least consider alternatives like Unreal, iClone, Blender, Maya, etc. to make films. The only thing at this point keeping me with Unity is all of the time and money that I devoted to it… but at some point I may just have to say “screw it” and bounce from it. And from what I see and hear from others… I’m not the only one with this thought/feeling. Unity shouldn’t want people to stick with unity simply over money/time committed… they should want people to stick with it because they want to.
Unity seems so busy on putting more features into the next version of Unity… rather than catching folks up and making the current versions usable and understood by the users. From one point of view, I don’t completely blame them as they probably feel the heat from their competitors… but many business have failed or fell hard off of their “perch” by concentrating on potential new markets and trying to acquire new customers meanwhile ignoring the current ones who brought them to the top and supported them. I don’t think it would be all that hard or take all that much time for Unity to task someone who knows how to do tutorials on the things we mentioned above… and just make it happen.
Hey. I’m looking to do the same thing as you. I actually thought i had it firgured out, but not sure. Obviously the nested timeline thing Adam Myhill is talking about is probably the best way to go. Havnt looked into it yet.
But, for a more basic approach:
Create all your different scenes with different lighting/ enviroments.
Record your shots with recorder
Mix them in timeline…
I dont know if the last bit is possible. I just assumed it is…but if not you just have to export your clips out to a video editor. Your scenes stay intact for reshoots, and re-record…
Not sure if you’ve given up but this hour long tutorial is from 2017. Lengthy tutorials are out there. you just have to look more in depth than the first page of Unity tutorials
You probably shouldn’t assume what lengths people have gone to find information… and try not to be so condescending… and then you provide an outdated and very limited info link. LOL. Try again buddy.
PS - you just have to update your calendar and realize it’s 2020 and Unity is a few versions past 2017… just saying.
I’m suggesting you to follow my live streams on procedures on filmmaking in Unity and a whole workflow that I’m applying on making my short movie. Ant to ask questions live.
Hello, I think you have the right idea already. Make multiple scenes with their own separate timelines and animations. Record the play and export it as a video. Throw the video into adobe or another video editor and string them together. Make sure to create new timelines for each scene as you may know. I think you can go about syncing audio either through unity itself, or your video editor (which I find best suited for me). I actually used the timeline to control my camera as well. I know this wasn’t an in-depth answer, but it works if you take it scene by scene.
Though I attempt to create video games on unity, I also dabble in green screen, figured it would be a cool idea to combine them both for future practice.
Looks really interesting! Please don’t forget to post the final version here, I would be really interested to see it. I want to try to test Unity this weekend as I will have some free time in my property in Spain here
Hey, how’s it going? I’m curious to see if you’ve made any progress with your Unity filmmaking venture. I just started a few months ago making a short animated film in Unity. I’m going to be making a little mini series.
I don’t know if you figured this out but you can drag a scene from your project folder into the hierarchy of another scene. So, you could create a sort of master Unity scene that just has your main timeline and whatever other master type things you might need. Then you could make separate Unity scenes for different locations that have different lighting, day/night, etc. You could setup a separate timeline in each of those Unity scenes with all your animations and stuff. Then drag each Unity scene into your main scene’s timeline. Or drag the Unity scenes into the main Unity scene’s hierarchy and activate whichever scene you want to work in and make your timeline(s) that way.
For mine, I can fit most of my locations into one sort of open world type map. What I did so far was to make separate timelines for each film scene in one Unity scene. I have a saber tooth timeline that transitions into my cliff timeline when passing over the valley then the cave timeline starts when they go into the cave. I even made doubles of my characters that are activated/deactivated when the film scene changes. It seemed easier to work in and move them around that way and keep things organized. I also have separate timelines for music/ambience and for audio/fx. I will need at least two other scenes that will be entirely different locations for later episodes but I haven’t got there yet.
Oh and I used Unity recorder to record then put the video file in iMovie to make the credits and stuff. I’ll be using Premier for that later and to eventually combine each episode into one full 20-30 minute short film. You can also record each film scene and combine the video files together just like regular film editing.
Here’s the link to the short so you can kinda see what I’m talking about a bit lol.
I don’t think there will be a definite answer, because everything is different to any other project, without taking into consideration the complexity and the details in terms of animations and facial expressions needed for a movie.
My humble opinion is to try it. If you never try you’ll never know for your particular case. Aim for something small. Think of it like a just a scene, instead of trying to make the whole movie… the same way you would in real life, piece by piece and then put them together.
I tried to make a Game of Thrones themed teaser trailer just to explore Cinemachine and all that, and it was tricky. I’m sure with more practice the result would be a lot better. And aided with some other tools, good things can be achieved. But don’t expect to solve it everything in Unity with just one click. Most likely for a movie, Unity will be only a part of it, maybe 50% of it, not all of it.
Here’s the link to the very simply teaser I made (it is restricted in some countries due to Copyright because of Game of Thrones):
Just wanted to add to this thread there is a new Sequences package coming out in Unity that supports flipping between sets and cameras etc. I am still experimenting and changing my mind on how to best use it, but I wrote some notes up in a blog in case useful to anyone else stumbling on this thread. The New Unity Sequences Support for Cinemachine – Extra Ordinary, the Series
I try to make movies with Unity, too. My experience: Forget all modules like Cinemachine etc…
Animation just over time takes too much time.
Use very simple triggers that let your actors make actions if they go over it. Speak, shoot, walk, ragdoll, whatever.
