Journal 55 — Using Previs Elements in Unity for Game Cutscene

Objective: To review the use of Previs Elements in Unity

Previs (Previsualization) Elements are generally sketches and basic concept art that can be used to plan out action sequences, cutscenes, or various film sequences.

In the “The Great Fleece”, we have several animation cutscenes to prepare, with the first one consisting of a sleeping guard, and the player sneaking and stealing his keycard.

The assets include PDFs with the Previs Elements to help guide creation of the cutscene.

As you see from the example, there’s a basic description of the director’s/creator’s vision on the cutscene, along with a concept sketch.

The blue arrow indicates a camera path along the player’s shoulder.

For the first part of the cutscene, we want to record an animation on the virtual camera movement and rotation along the player’s shoulder.

The second part of the cutscene concept is shown below. We want specific camera shots that pan down to see the player take the keycard, and then pan up and see the player’s face again.

We can add another animation and record keyframes at specific locations.

To make this easier, we can create an empty game object that the virtual camera can “Look At” in its properties.

From the three shots below, we have an initial keyframe recorded at the start of the cutscene with the player and sleeping guard, then we move the target game object to the location of the keycard and record a keyframe, and finally we move the target game object back up to focus on the player’s face.

Here is the complete sequence put together.

You may need to smooth out the horizontal and vertical movement of the camera with dampening in the virtual camera properties.

The last part of the Previs Elements is to create a fade in at the start of the cutscene.

We can make a fade in effect with a UI image that is stretched to cover the whole game view.

The UI image is set to black, and then we can record an animation that changes the alpha from solid to transparent.

In the next article, I will put together the items from Cinemachine and these concepts based on Previs Elements into Timeline.

Thank you for your time!