What is Cinemachine and Timeline in Unity?
Objective: Let’s learn what Cinemachine and Timeline is in Unity and how it can improve your game development.
What is Cinemachine?
Cinemachine is an amazingly powerful cinematic tool that was developed for Unity, with a focus on providing developers with dynamically controlled cameras that helped them achieve the best composition for their project whilst speeding up their game development. It was also designed to free itself from the existing expensive camera logic that Unity was using at the time. The best part is that it is free for anybody to use and available for any project you wish to incorporate it in!
How to get Cinemachine installed into your project in Unity
This is about as simple as it gets. To get started it only involves going into your Package Manager in Unity and downloading and installing it into your project:
Window → Package Manager → Cinemachine → Install.
When you now click the ‘+’ symbol drop down menu in your Hierarchy , you will be presented with a new option, ‘Cinemachine’ and from here you can start implementing your new cameras!
What is Timeline?
Timeline is a feature in Unity that allows you to play director in your own project by giving you the possibilities to create your own cinematic cutscenes and sequences (whether it be gameplay, audio or particle effects) using a Timeline.
How to get Timeline installed into your project in Unity
Similar to Cinemachine this is a very simple install, Window → Package Manager → Timeline → Install.
However, if you were to start a new project in Unity today and were using one the latest versions, then this will automatically be installed as a core package in your Package files in the Project window:
You will then need to open the Timeline tab window by going to Window → Sequencing → Timeline.
