Cinematic Stealth Project — The Card Cutscene #6

Composing the scene for the first cutscene!

I’ve created my very first cutscene with cool assets using Unity’s Timeline! The cutscene is all about Darren, the protagonist, stealthily stealing a card from a sleeping guard, and succeed at it!

In this article, I want to show you how I’ve built the card cutscene timeline, and the elements that partake in the shot!

The Timeline

The cutscene counts with the following elements:

• Cinemachine Virtual Cameras: Following the Card Cutscene storyboard, I have set up two spots for the camera to alternate. By creating a Cinemachine Track, selecting the Main Camera, and then, drag and dropping each virtual camera, I can either blend or change cameras inside the Timeline.

You can see what the Storyboard looks like here!

• Card Activation Track: When Darren reaches for the card on the guards lap, the card is deactivated to look like he picked it up.

Actors Animation Track: This is where Darren and the guard are animated. I simply add the recorded animation to the track and let it play! Although, I’ve made a small modification to the animation speed, slowing it down because I thought it was a bit fast for my liking.

Screen Fader Animation Track: It’s just an animated UI image to fade in and out at the beginning and end of the cutscene. Simply recording and changing the alpha value in the same Timeline sequence will do just fine!

Over The Shoulder (OTS) Shot Animation Track: This will move the camera towards Darren’s shoulder. For the smooth movement, I clicked on the Keyframes to open the Animation window, and modified them to Freely Smooth it.

Mid Shot Look At Animation Track: Instead of animating the position of the virtual camera, I’ve created a new empty GameObject, animated its position, and made the camera look at that GameObject. And to complete the cutscene, I’ve added a bit of damping to the movement so it’s smooth and not so linear.