Cinematics using Unity Cinemachine Dolly Track Camera

In this Unity 3rd Person tutorial, I'll be showing how to create dramatic cinematic using the Unity Cinemachine Dolly Track Camera as an intro to the scene. Then once the intro cinematic are finished playing, I'll switch to the main player free look camera. ► Download Playmaker at https://bit.ly/3

This tutorial uses Unity's Cinemachine to create a cinematic intro: the camera flies in over a waterfall, sweeps around, and ends behind the player, at which point control hands off to the regular free-look camera. The technique relies on a Cinemachine Dolly Camera with Track, an animation that drives the camera along that track, and a priority swap between virtual cameras so the cut is seamless.

Create the dolly camera and track

In your cameras folder you likely already have a free-look and a side-view virtual camera. Create one more: a Cinemachine Dolly Camera with Track. This spawns two objects, a virtual camera and a dolly track. Rename the camera "dolly cam." Set its Look At target to the player so it always frames the character, and note that the new track is automatically assigned in the camera's Path field under the Body section.

Place the waypoints

Select the dolly track to reveal its two waypoints. Rather than dragging blindly, frame the scene view where you want each point, then click the small icon next to that waypoint to snap it to the current view. Set waypoint 0 high above the waterfall, and the final waypoint behind the player roughly where the free-look camera sits, a little lower. Then select the first waypoint and click plus to add an intermediate point between them. Each waypoint also has a Roll value: at 0 the track is flat, so dial in a negative roll on the middle point to bank the camera like an airplane for a more dramatic sweep.

Understand position units and priority

The dolly cam's Path Position can be measured three ways. Path Units place the camera at numbered waypoints (1, 2, 3). Distance uses world units along the track (the track here is about 149 units long). Normalized places it between 0 (start) and 1 (end). You can animate any of these. For the handoff, raise the dolly cam's Priority to 11 so it outranks the free-look camera (priority 10) and is used first; dropping it below 10 hands control back.

Animate the fly-in and swap cameras

With the dolly cam selected, create a new animation (in an animations folder under cam, named intro cam). Set the frame rate to 12 and animate over about 10 seconds: at frame 10 set Path Position to 1, which auto-keys 0 at the start, producing the draw-in toward the player. At the final keyframe, while recording, drop Priority to 9; then drag the priority-11 keyframe to one frame before the end so it stays 11 until the last moment and Cinemachine smoothly blends to the free-look camera instead of hard-cutting. Finally, because animations loop by default, select the clip and uncheck Loop Time so the intro plays once.