Overview
The Machinima Maker allows users to easily and rapidly create complex cutscenes and vignettes from within the Unity Engine. Cutscenes contain individual events on a timeline that are invoked when the cutscene is played. These events can have any number of effects, from activating a game object in the unity scene to sending bml and locomotion commands to SmartBody. Many common events are provided out of the box, however custom events are allowed because any function written in a C# script can be invoked from the Machinima Maker.
Quick facts:
- Location: https://svn.ict.usc.edu/svn_vh/trunk/lib/vhunity/vhAssets
- Language: C#
- Distribution: Part of the vhAssetsPackage
- Platform(s): Unity
Users
Starting the Machinima Maker
The Machinima Maker is part of the vhAssets package. It is loaded from inside of unity by clicking the "VH" menu on the menu toolbar and then clicking "Machinima Maker"
Creating a Cutscene
If you have no previous cutscenes in the unity scene, then when you load the Machinima Maker window, there will be 1 single button that says "Add Cutscene." If you have previous cutscenes in the scene, you can add a new cutscene by clicking the + button next to the word "cutscene"
Adding/Removing Tracks
Click the - or + sign next to the "Track" text at the top center of the window
Creating Events
There are several ways to create new events for a cutscene
- Right click on the track area and select "Add Event"
- Ctrl + Left click on the track area
- Click the little "E" button then left click anywhere in the track area
Modifying Events
Upon selecting an event with left click, you have access to the "Event" tab on the user interface. Here you can set event properties such as event name, start time, and event type. The event type is a category (such as Audio or SmartBody) that provides access to functionality that is inherent to the type (like playing a sound or using locomotion). Event types provide easy access to this functionality.
Once the event type is selected, choose the functionality that you want the event to perform when invoked. Once chosen, make sure you will out the required parameters listed below the selected type.
Setting Up Custom Events
Developers
Creating New Event Categories
Message API
Sends
Receives
Known Issues
FAQ
Link to the appropriate section in the main FAQ page.