Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
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Cinema Director
Think of Cinema Director like video editing software such as Adobe Premiere or Final Cut, except that it allows you to control Unity's entire 3D environment.
Cinema Director allows you to control almost any gameobject and it's associated properties inside of Unity. Control cameras, how they move, when shots change. Control audio, including number of audio tracks and when audio plays and stops. Control when animations are triggered (both legacy and mecanim animations), control lighting, particle effects, standard gameobjects and more.
Yes! That's one of the main features of Cinema Director. You can have a cutscene (sequence) start when the game starts, or on a trigger. Using a trigger will allow you to start sequences during gameplay that happen in the surrounding environment. Think of a game like Uncharted. There is always so much going on around you as you play Drake. All these events can be sequenced using Cinema Director without the need for writing any scripts. You can also have a cutscene not start at all, and control when it is played with your own script through our API, available here.
We allow you to capture storyboard images that you can have captured at any point during cutscene playback, and saved to a folder. You can also do a full frame-by-frame export of your cutscene at any resolution and framerate that you wish, for use in video editing software. Check out our YouTube video here.
Yes! Cinema Director's event system is open source, so if there is something you need that Cinema Director does not have, you can write your own custom timeline events. Check out our full guide here!
Most of our products contain documentation to help new customers learn our software. All of these are divided into their respective folders, and can be removed safely.
- About populates the Help > About menu item window and displays the welcome window on startup of our extension.
- Documents contains the user documentation for each extension.
- Example Scenes contain the demo cutscenes of our extension in use.
Cinema Director allows you to build to windows, UWP, iOS and Android, as well as PC and Mac. We strive to support all platforms that Unity supports. If you have any issues building your project, please contact us.
Cinema Mocap
It sure does. At the moment, you can plug in your Kinect 2 for Windows and it will work just as easily the previous version of the Kinect does. Just make sure you have Windows 8,8.1 or Windows 10 installed and a compatible USB 3.0 port, as both of those are required for Kinect 2. You will also need the Kinect for Windows SDK v2.0 installed. For more information on specific hardware requirements, visit Microsoft here.
The Kinect requires more power than a standard USB connection can supply. On newer Xbox 360s, they added a special port just for Kinects that will let you plug your Kinect in without an adapter. For use on older Xbox 360 models as well as for Cinema Mocap, you have to get a power adapter that will let you use your Kinect with your PC. These can be found on Microsoft by visiting here.
You bet it does, because… just like with the first Kinect and the Xbox 360, the Kinect for Xbox One and the Kinect v2 for Windows are the exact same piece of hardware, apart from the Xbox logo on the Xbox One version. However, if you want to use your Xbox One Kinect with Cinema Mocap, you will need the adapter that ships with the Kinect v2 for Windows.
Fortunately, Microsoft started selling this adapter separately. This is good news for budget Mocap enthusiasts, as you can now go to a thrift store and pick up a Xbox One Kinect for a good price, and order this adapter. The adaptor is available from Amazon here.
We have no plans in the near future to support PlayStation Eye. We’re going to stick to depth sensors only for now.
We were planning this, but it’s not looking likely now. With the demise of OpenNI (being updated and maintained), there is not longer a “one stop shop” solution for every depth sensor, so we’d have to deal with implementing each sensors SDK separately.
Yes! As a matter of fact, we already have a facial solution available called Cinema Face Cap! Click here for more information!
The Kinect v1.0 does not support this, and the Kinect v2 does not support finger capture while capturing the rest of the body.
Although this is in our roadmap, we are not currently developing a capture solution for hand gestures.
No, at the moment in Cinema Mo Cap you are limited to only using the supplied model. This is in our roadmap for a future release, but is not an easy task, as each user's model is configured differently.
Yes! Cinema Mo Cap outputs an FBX compatible Collada file that is readable by most 3D software packages. You can open the file in your software package of choice, open up the graph editor, and tweak to your hearts content. For more information on this, check out this tutorial one of our guys did a while back on how to clean up your animations in Blender. It might come in handy. We’re also working on bringing our curve editor that makes Cinema Director awesome into a future Cinema Mocap release for this very purpose. Keep an eye out for that, eventually.
Unfortunately, the official SDK for both the original and the v2 Kinect is only made for Windows, and there’s no real way around that. For a while, there was an unofficial open source SDK called OpenNI which supported the original Kinect. OpenNI was actually a project heavily contributed to by PrimeScene, a company which actually developed the original Kinect on contract for Microsoft, as opposed to the Kinect 2 which was developed in house. OpenNI DID have Mac support, and it was on our roadmap for a while. It would have worked the same as the windows version albeit with a few less joints. But then, last year Apple decided to buy PrimeSense and shut down the OpenNI project, removing all of its resources from the internet.
We've tested Cinema Mocap with Parallels and VMWare Fusion and it seems to work pretty well in both of those solutions, as well as just using Boot Camp. So there are was to use your Mac for Mocap, but all of them still involve Windows.
Fortunately, there are aftermarket USB 3.0 adapters you can buy for your desktop computer and install in your machine. This adapter which is made by Renesas, has been found to work quite nicely with Kinect v2. You can buy from Amazon HERE.
Cinema Pro Cams
Yes we do. Cinema Pro Cams operates with a standard Unity camera, so you can add additional image effect scripts as needed. For 3D Pro Cams, you can add image effects to either the left or right camera, or both. This will effect performance to an extent.
Cinema Pro Cams uses industry standard 3D rigs, and can support many 3D formats including Top/Bottom, Left/Right, Interlaced, Interlaced reversed and Anaglyph.
Unity has a problem rendering shadows with a small near clipping plane value. Experiment with different values for the near clipping plane such as changing from a value of 0.3 to 1.0. Check out the Unity forums here for working on this issue.
Not at this time. We only support prime lenses. Specifically, the Cooke Prime S4i T2 lenses from 12mm to 150mm.
Yes, Cinema Pro Cams supports mobile with very minimal performance hit. However, performance can be impacted with using 3D Pro Cam cameras, due to 2 cameras being rendered at the same time.
Cinema Face Cap
Cinema Face Cap requires a 64 bit computer running windows 8 or higher with a Kinect v2 for either Windows or Xbox One. The computer must have the Microsoft Kinect SDK 2.0 installed, as well as an available, supported USB 3.0 port. For more information, see Microsoft's hardware requirements here. Kinect 2 for Xbox One requires supported USB adaptor that can be found on Amazon or Microsoft. Cinema Face Cap does not support Mac OSX natively. For use on a Mac you must have Windows installed in Bootcamp. Parallels may work depending on computer performance.
No, Cinema Face Cap supports Kinect v2 only, for Windows or Xbox One. We currently have no plans to support Kinect v1 at this time.
Unfortunately not yet. Currently Cinema Face Cap is a Unity only product, generating a .anim file. There are FBX converters on the Unity Asset Store you can try out however, if you need exported data.
No. Cinema Face Cap is a motion capture product in the traditional sense, that you record your animation and then have it saved for use on other character models.
Cinema Face Cap allows control of the direction that a blendshape operates. In the output wizard, set the style from "positive" to "negative".