What is Cinemachine and Timeline?

Find out in this short explanation of them!

Did you know that “Adam,” a real-time-rendered short film in Unity, was made by the Unity Demo team using “Cinemachine” and “Timeline?”

If you don’t know what “Adam” is, take a peek for yourself down below!

The camera work and all the elements in the short film come together through the use of Cinemachine and Timeline. They are powerful tools to make beautiful shots come to life.

Cinemachine

Cinemachine is a camera system that is all about camera work. It features many types of camera modules needed for a game. It also handles all camera movement, placement, and logic of tracking targets, composing, blending, and cutting between shots.

Cinemachine does not create new cameras, but instead, it directs the Unity camera for multiple or single shots. The shots are composed of virtual cameras that move and rotate the Unity camera and control its settings.

Timeline

The timeline creates a linear of events. It’s used to create cutscenes and gameplay sequences as seen in the image above. It gives a developer an easy way of having different elements work together in sequence. Without Timeline, all the events would have to be scripted, which could result in a mess of code!

Production

Together, with timeline and cinemachine, they become very powerful to create cutscenes, gameplay sequences, complex particle effects, audio sequences, and more. The “Adam” short films are great examples of the power they have.

I am excited to learn so much about them! I will be documenting my progress through a series of Cinemachine and Timeline going in-depth through various features they offer! Stay tuned :)

Gabriel