And…..Cut!
Hi, and welcome to the first ever Mercury Blue development blog post! I thought for this blog entry I’d talk a little about how we work with our development team when creating cutscenes.
There are some very cool Unity cinematic tools out there and the latest version of Unity (2017) has the new timeline editor which
is going to be a game changer! That said – I still like to use storyboarding as a means of conveying the cut scene to the developer
before having them implement it. So, here’s how we do it:
1. First, I’ll get out the white board and ink out several frames that represent the cutscene.
2. Once I’m happy with the basic layout and flow I’ll load up unity with the required assets and ‘mock up’ the scene, whether it be still shots or some basic animation.
3. I then use Camtasia to record and edit the mocked up scene. BTW If you haven’t used Camtasia, I’d highly recommend
checking out the free trial. It’s super easy to use and ideal for cranking out video story boards quickly.
4. Audio – this part is crucial. Now, originally I handed the developer a bunch of audio files that I created the camtasia clip with.
The problem was, developers aren’t artists and they aren’t cinematographers. I’d have to go through many iterations of a cutscene implementation
before the timing was how I wanted it. So, I ended up exporting the entire audio from the camtasia file as a single mp3/ogg file then hand that to the programmer.
That way, they have the timing laid out for them exactly, and it became much easier (and faster) to match the camera shots and closeups.
Cutscene Workflow
So, there you have it! Some quick tips if you’re working in a team and producing in-game cutscenes!
Later!
Simon