Lining up Audio & Visual to Build Cutscenes in Unity

Creating the Introduction Cut Scene

According to the Directors Notes that I have for this cutscene the shots are supposed to happen in accordance with the actors speaking.

I have my scene blocked in and all of my virtual cameras set up. Also notice that Darren lips move when he is talking. I have a voice over audio file for this scene that appears that it already lines up with the animations, so I am going to want to start playing it when the animations start.

Next I need an Audio track in my timeline. I also need an audio source to play the Audio to play, for this I am going to add an audio source to the main camera so that the audio is coming from the camera itself. I add this GameObject to the audio track that I just created. I then add the Intro Cutscene Dialogue Audio Clip to the timeline.

Now when I play the timeline the audio will play along with it. Once you press the play button the audio will play as you scrub through the timeline. Note some older versions of Unity you may have to enter Play Mode in order to hear the audio, I am not sure what version of Unity they have added the Audio Preview in the time line.

I then Play the timeline and add the shots to the camera in they appropriate places, so the shots line up accordance with the audio.

I continue until I have all of my shots in the correct places.

I added in the Fade to Black effect at the end of the audio.

Now that I have all of my shots lined up with the audio I can add the needed animations to the camera’s (panning, blending from one shot to the next).

The First Animation I did was the panning with the Dolly Track I am in.

I then used the blending trick to make the next camera pan.

I continued animating the cameras until I got a cut scene that I was happy with.

I then organized my timeline by adding a track group for all of the virtual camera animations.