Composing an Unity’s Cutscene

Composing a cutscene in Unity is very similar to composing a shot in photography or filmmaking: anyone can combine a multitude of shots to create a scene, but those who take the time to plan out their shot will make theirs better. And luckily for us, by spending time on previs, it’ll make composing the cutscene even faster and better.

Prior to Composing

Before you start composing, it’s important to note that you’ll need Unity’s Cinemachine in your project.

You can install it by going to

Windows -> Package Manager

and this will launch the Package Manager Window

Once the Package Manager Window is opened, change the Packages dropdown from In Asset to Unity Registry.

After switching it, search for Cinemachine and press the Install button in the lower right hand corner to install it into your project.

Using Cinemachine

By installing the Cinemachine package into your project, you’re able to use a whole host of dynamic cameras that allows you to capture the scene at the right time. However, for this article, we’ll be focusing on the Virtual Camera.

Adding a Virtual Camera

You can add a virtual camera by going to

Cinemachine -> Create Virtual Camera

And yes, you can have more than one virtual camera in one scene!

Creating your first composure

After adding a virtual camera into the scene, it’s time to position the virtual camera in the action. However, reference your previs in order to make the best composure.

First shot with the character and a guard

Even though it you can play around with the position, and rotation of the virtual camera, if you position your view in the Scene window, you can align the virtual camera to your view by pressing

Ctrl + Shift + F : Align with View

This way, the need to make massive changes to the position and rotation is done automatically while leaving you to make minute changes.

Now all that’s left is to make the actual cutsene!