Pegasus - no fuss cutscene and flythrough generator

Introducing Pegasus - the cutscene and flythrough generator for unity!

I was doing some cool environmental stuff and wanted to make a video to show it off... so I went looking and couldn't find anything I liked - and so Pegasus was born.

Creating a cutscene or flythrough with Pegasus is as simple as adding a Pegasus manager to your scene, and then hitting Ctrl+Click on where you want the fly through to go, and then pressing Play.

While designed for ease of use and speed to set up, Pegasus does not lack power either and gives you complete control over where and how fast the the flythrough goes, and at what the camera looks at as it progresses through the scene.

Pegasus is as comfortable on interior and mesh based scenes as it is on terrains, and has been integrated with Helios to allow you to record 2D, 3D and VR videos of the paths you choose.

Additionally, while Pegasus was designed to move camera's around - it can move any object around such as animals, vehicles etc.

Here is a link to the Pegasus documentation on the Procedural Worlds web site.



In this image Pegasus mostly follows the path, but also takes a moment to look out over the water.



In this image Pegasus flies around a small farm. The yellow gizmos are where Pegasus will travel, and the blue Gizomos are what it will look at. You can see some videos of this in the next post.

 

Here is a simple fly through demo done in Pegasus.

And here is how it was done.



This time : A big flythrough - showing the hierarchy and Pegasus Manager.



And here is an individual POI segment showing the POI editor.

Check out this video created with Helios and Pegasus working together. It takes the relative lack of power of my setup out of the equation and the result is silky smooth. The ship is being moved by Pegasus as well ! Helios by UtopiaWorx is the perfect companion to Pegasus. In addition creating silky smooth video renders, Helios can also render out 3D and VR enabled versions as well.

 

Really interested in another awesome Asset of one of the biggest Unity Asset Creators!
The screenshots do not give me any hint but it has something to do with Mesh / Object "procedural" spawning I suppose
Can't wait!

Cheers
Ronny

 

Looking very nice Adam, but like RonnyDance has said, I still need more information.

 

Hehe - this is the first of two. The terrain in the samples was done in Gaia. Everything else was done in *new to be announced asset*, and the video's were done with Pegasus. A how to video is uploading now to give you a sense of how quick and easy it is to use.

 

Actually it was originally built as a camera spline tool for creating fly-through videos (how it got the name Pegasus heheh).. But through beta, Adam also made it so you could also use it to control other game objects.. Think of wagons running trade routes, planes flying flight plans, etc. It is REALLY a cool tool.

Also he started developing about the same time John Rossitter started developing Helios. So John has some built-in functionality already in Helios to pair up with Pegasus for creating super-awesome offline rendered video! No more worry about lag in your high res promotion videos!!!

I HIGHLY recommend this to anyone doing promo videos. I will be using it for all of my upcoming Stamp Packs for Gaia to showcase possible terrains created with the stamps. Very cool stuff.

And if you notice the second image Adam posted, where the lines go from the circle to the center. Those are telling Pegasus where to look. So if a camera is moving along the spline, it will transition the camera to look at the point at the end of the line. Very cool stuff!!!

 

Heheh.. You didn't attach videos Adam. Did you actually record videos to go along with those screens to throw online maybe?

 

I feel dumb, I dont understand Pegasus. Whats the difference between Gaia and placing objects onto the terrain ?!?!?

 

I expected a horse with wings but this is more interesting.

 

I better explain it - i can understand why you would be confused Its not a spawning system - its a flythrough sustem. I updated the description.

 

Pegasus sounds really nice. I always wanted to create easy walkthrough videos of my terrain / demo scenes! Finally a tool is coming for that!

Some questions:

How does it define the Height Coordinate? Do I just have to play manually with the y coordinate?

What does "move" mean exactly? I mean if I spawn a cow in my terrain what does Pegasus do exactly? Spawn them randomly? Move them through waypoints? Or rotate is for the Pegasus camera?

 

A how to video has been created and is processing now - this should hopefully answer your questions.

 

Looking great there Adam, nice work!

 

Its looking cool...
Are you working on any other features except this?

 

It's not currently intended to be the mother of all assets - and isn't be priced that way either.

It's designed to do flythroughs really well and to allow you to create them in a way that is simple, intuitive and quick.

The same capability can also be used to drive other objects through your scene - in the video the ship is being driven by Pegasus as well.

I will be adding more features based on the feedback I receive from the community. Already have a trello list with a whole bunch of cool things to add

 

simple and intuitive flythrough system ... awesome
nice terrain .. well balanced.

 

ah now I understand. Thanks. Sounds great. One question. Why does my gaia terrain not looking so great like yours?! Do you use special technics?! Iam on OSX. Is there a limitation to windows? Mybe direct x?

 

I generated the terrain using the random terrain feature in the Gaia session manager and textured it.

Then I used the new asset I have been working on to do the rest. Finally I added the standard Gaia grass.

There are a bunch of additional assets here and I suspect the main difference you will find is because of them - particularly the lighting, water and post fx.

Tenkoku - always lovely skies, lighting, clouds, weather and environmental sounds
AQUAS - lovely low impact water
Scion - great post fx, tonemapping, nice auto focus and depth of field
Rocks and boulders 3 - really nice customisable rocks and boulders
Logs and natural barriers - awesome photogrammetry based logs
Village exteriors kit - the buildings, barrels and props - amazing value for money
Desktop trees pack - the lovely speedtrees used
HQ Grasses Packs - great grasses and awesome value for money

 

I can't believe this. I have stressed about the difficulty associated with creating flythroughs and which camera asset to purchase and how to install and the cost of such an asset. I anticipated having to employ someone else to help create this.

And now Adam decides to go and create an easy to install and use asset, complete with video tutorials. Brilliant job.
Also worthy of note is the brilliant and very helpful reviews on the asset store. This seems to be so easy that my 6 year old should be able to do this

Now if we could only convince Adam to divulge some more information regarding this other asset.

 

I had the same issue - its is possible to do with standard Unity tools - but is ever so slow and hard to get a good result. Glad you like it.

This asset is getting pretty close to release now... i added another feature last week and that's blown it out a little because there is a lot of work to implement it in the comprehensive way I want. I think you will be happy with the result. Assuming Pegasus beds down without too many issues then this will probably be ready in another few weeks. I used it heavily as a partner tool to Gaia in the creation of the demo scenes above.

 

Pegasus isn't limited to exteriors and terrains - check these amazing videos from 3D Forge:

Village Interiors Kit :

Village Exteriors Kit:

 

The slogan developed during beta testing of the next cool tool has become, "It's just fun.." I've sat for a few hours getting lost playing with stuff done in the next new tool. It is just AMAZING how well it fits in and complements Gaia!

One thing that Adam's beta testers have learned is not to suggest things as beta nears end because Adam is very prone to adding feature creep. It was my fault for the delay of the first Gaia update because a couple of things didn't work in a way that made sense to me. But the delay allowed a couple of cool features with the POIs to be added. So even when things are delayed, it is usually because Adam is tweaking things to make them twice as amazing as what was originally planned...

Grats on the release Adam and I can't wait for people to see what you are cooking up with the next asset.. Again.. It is AMAZING! (And... It's just fun... lol)

 

and one I did from an early beta (very early in the development process)

 

Just a quick couple of questions about this asset, which looks excellent by the way.

I presume you can add multiple Managers and have them control different objects within the scene?

Can you rotate the POI and does the managed object adhere to the rotation? Thinking of things like banking the camera when cornering with the POI set to follow the path/plane? Does it intreprolerlate (sorry hope you know what I mean, cant spell for toffee) between rotations if 2 POI are rotated differently?

How about adding an auto bank feature?

cheers

 

Yes. I will do an updated video that shows this.

I had this in an early version, but removed it. I will add it back in the next version. For cameras it didn't make a lot of sense, and i never thought of doing general objects until recently - but works really well, so now banking makes sense again

Yes.

Will explore in next release.

 

Very cool the see this being launched
It is going to make many people's life easier
It is lots of fun playing with the settings and get new results right away

 

Hey guys - awesome response to the launch of a new asset - always a nervous time. The feedback and ideas coming back are awesome. Have been writing up an roadmap for Pegasus.. and am very excited by whats coming down the track in the near future... expect to see an awesome first update in the next week - plus some over the top video of what you can do with it

 

Adam Congrats on the launch of Pegasus mate!
I had a blast working with you on getting it ready to work with Helios.

For those of you who don't know, Adam and I worked very hard to integrate both Pegasus and Helios to work together.
While Pegasus is a Mighty Steed that can charge into battle and navigate about the field, Helios with his All Seeing eye, can capture it all on MPEG

In all seriousness though, Congrats Adam!
I look forward to a long successful path with these two together.

 

Congrats Adam on Pegasus. Very well done....again.

Cheers
O

 

I look forward to seeing what kind of magic you guys work together to further integrate the two. I was totally blown away with the pairing when I helped you both with the betas. They were both friggin awesome way back then.. And neither was even finished yet! Great job to both of ya!

 

We have some cool ideas in mind. Gonna make some VooDoo this weekend for sure!

 

I haven't bought this yet but I watched the long video where you show it being used to circle a building.

I'm sure I will buy it soon, even though I already have other spline type assets, I like the simplicity and focus of this one.

One potential timesaving feature request struck me when watching that video, for scenarios such as the one in the video where you are circling something. It looked a tad tedious to be clicking the dropdown to customise the lookout direction for each point and do the initial broad positioning of each lookat point. I would like to have a feature in the Pegasus manager where I can press a button and all the points will be set to use the custom lookat mode. It would also be nice to be able to specify an initial game object of interest that they should initial be pointed at when pressing this button. Then, after pressing that button, I can very quickly select each point individually and refine the exact lookat gizmo for each one. Hope I explained this idea clearly enough, cheers.

 

+1 - I like this suggestion. I think at one point during beta we talked about being able to toggle default actions for a couple of things and I thought being able to default to either path or lookat was one of them, but maybe not. Or maybe that was the point where Adam got sidetracked with the asset yet to be revealed and fell through the cracks. I like the added idea of being able to set a default lookat. The problem would be how to define it. I'm trying to remember if Gaia POIs spawn retaining connection to their original prefabs. If so, you could drag a prefab into the target. Or you could use tags (I really wish Unity would get it together and support multiple tags on game objects lol). Or names. Not sure. Any magic you might be able to work with that Adam?

 

Thanks. I have added this to the roadmap

 

Looks really nice and simple! I have already bought multiple Assets for creating a camera path animation but this looks to much more simple and quick to use. After watching the tutorial video I would see one development idea. Would it possible to add a Pause (stop camera movement for certain time) functionality into Pegasus in some later stage?

 

Added to the roadmap. At moment you can do it with a very slow POI segment. But it sounds like a handy feature.

 

Adam you just know the more assets you make, the more money I'm gonna throw at you. This looks pretty cool for creating promo videos. I'm keeping my eye on this - still massively developing but if I need to start making videos I'll be picking this up. $20 is a bargain too

 

Thanks. The price will be increasing with the next release so get in quick

 

Adam,
I bougth Pegasus today, but when I click CTRL + Left mouse at a location I get the error message:
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Pegasus.PegasusManager.GetTerrain (Vector3 location) (at Assets/Pegasus/Scripts/PegasusManager.cs:871)
Is it a known issue?

 

I have fixed this and submitted a new version to the asset store. Please grab and create a new Pegasus - it should resolve this issue.

New version 1.0.2 has the following changes:
* Deeper integration with Helios
* Ability to spawn POI even in empty scenes
* Fix to a error generated when a target object wasn't selected.
* Automatically grabs main camera and makes it the target (you can override this).

 

Adam,
Thanks for your SW update
I grabbed the new Pegasus, but I still get the error.
I am using Unity Ver. 5.3.5 and the Main Camera. The demo scene works OK.
I looks more like an Unity error, but maybe you have a clue??
Here is the complete Error message:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Pegasus.PegasusManager.GetTerrain (Vector3 location) (at Assets/Pegasus/Scripts/PegasusManager.cs:889)
Pegasus.PegasusManager.GetValidatedPoiPosition (Vector3 source, PoiHeightCheckType heightCheckOverride) (at Assets/Pegasus/Scripts/PegasusManager.cs:674)
Pegasus.PegasusManagerEditor.OnSceneGUI () (at Assets/Pegasus/Scripts/Editor/PegasusManagerEditor.cs:473)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)
Rethrow as TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation.
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:232)
System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MethodBase.cs:115)
UnityEditor.SceneView.CallOnSceneGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:2056)
UnityEditor.SceneView.HandleSelectionAndOnSceneGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1405)
UnityEditor.SceneView.OnGUI () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/SceneView/SceneView.cs:1242)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

 

Hi Adam.

I don't do a lot of fly-through videos generally, but I'm still interested in Pegasus for controlling vehicles (like my airship), and other scene objects that will be moving along fixed paths (and because the Pegasus pic on your home page is completely awesome ). From your demo, repeating loops, featuring speed and look direction changes are a snap, so some of the things I want to do should work fine, but I still have a few questions:

1. Can you start on command, do one loop, and then stop at your original position? Someone asked about pausing mid flight (which it apparently can't do yet), but can it stop and wait to be re-triggered after each circuit?

2. What about banking? Can Pegasus specify a roll angle for the object it carries, that can be set at each waypoint? (This assumes you aren't using a POI target, but simply looking down the path.)

3. Have you tried walking around on your moving ship yet? I ask this because I've had mixed results using imported animations, Animator animations, and waypoint systems to move vehicles. They don't all return accurate enough position data for my character controller (Ootii's Motion Controller) to maintain his position on deck as a platform moves, especially if it's moving fairly fast in 3 dimensions.

What I need is something that can smoothly accelerate to a reasonable travel speed, negotiate a closed course (that includes vertical and horizontal movement), and then slow to a smooth stop at the end, without losing the passenger. The waypoint system I'm using now can (sort of) do this, but it's nowhere near as easy to configure as Pegasus if I need to make changes, so I might be looking to switch.

I may just get it anyway, and use it for any motions that don't require these extra features, but if Pegasus can do the rest as well...

 

I used Pegasus to make that new Video showcasing some of my Grass:

Have been really Fun and Easy to makin' it
Enjoy !

 

You're not meant to video real life Cheat...

 

Sorry for the Video Cheats Inconveniences, i will try a Real Life Fly Through next time...oups dreamin'

 

This is very odd. There seems to be something unusual in your setup. The first error you posted happens after a null reference check - so it shouldn't ever happen. And the second one also happens after a null ref check - but in a different way - it appears on the surface of the error that your terrain is missing a terrain data object (which they never should be). Can you PM me and we can do a Skype session to work out whats going on.

 

Yes.

You can pause via scripting.

Not perhaps over the weekend. Its on the roadmap.

No. I will give it a go. Pegasus does it magic in late update.

 

Thanks Adam. Looks promising. I'm working on other things right now, but as soon as I can get back to that part of my game, I'll be giving it a try.

 

Hey everyone,

There is a new update coming to Pegasus, most likely on the weekend. It includes

* Pegasus chaining - you can chain Pegasus together so that they run one after the other - think of it as the way in which camera's change perspective when filming dialog between two people.

* Pegasus triggers - the ability to trigger other game events to happen at certain points in the fly through
- its extensible - so you can use the existing ones or roll your own
- supports triggering other concurrent pegasus flythrough events
- start or stop an animation on another game object
- fade in and out on a helios playback

* Smarter auto detection and configuration - Pegasus will evaluate the world where you click and configure appropriately.

Where I am going to with this, is that you should never need to post process your video - Pegasus will do the whole lot in one take if used in conjunction with Helios.

While its not so obvious from the way I have pitched it - but Pegasus can drive any object through your scene - and some of these features are aimed at expanding out that capability.

In my dev demo I am driving cameras, humming birds, and stags - and the setup on all of these things is super fast and simple.