SLATE (Complete Gameplay Cutscenes & Cinematics Sequencer)

Hello,
I have just updated the extension package. Please re-download it from the website and re-import to fix this problem.
Thank you.

Hey,
Indeed the recording utility is unfortunately not working on OSX at the moment for reasons @Smokas stated. In the next update I will replace this with a simpler recording utility working on both windows and osx and make the existing utility an optional download.
Thank you.

Hello,
Indeed there is a native sequencer tool coming by Unity, but there is absolutely no relationship between the two and each one is a different tool. As for the differences, I can't really tell just yet, since the Unity sequencer is not yet out of course
Thanks!

 

Hello, also interesting to simplify a global setup, does Slate work with GI addon such as SEGI?

 

Hello,
Yes, Slate uses a single camera for rendering all cutscenes. As such any image effects (like SEGI is) applied to that "render camera" will be used normally and without having to re-apply the same effects/settings setup in all your camera shots.

 

Slate does provide a lip sync feature or there is some specific add on integration?

Edit: did find it: LipSync

 

Hi, I just purchased this. Aren't there any sample scene to quickly test the asset? I couldn't find any either on the package or on the website.

 

Hey,
Thanks for getting Slate. I plan to upload some samples soon as I get back from vacation.
If you have any usage questions, please let me know.

 

Hi, we have been using your asset for a while, and there is a thing that we couldn't figure out. When we try to move multiple keyframes on more than one different actors; it just won't do that. It is really disturbing because lets say we want to add a new section between two others; we have to move all the keyframes from different actors separately. We know that it is possible to move elements from actors with moving the sections; however that doesn't help if there is a long actor starting from the beginning. I hope i made myself clear.

 

Hi,
Can one drop waypoints in 3d space for the camera to follow?

 

Hey,
Thanks for using Slate.
Unfortunately right now, keyframes across different Property Tracks can not be multi-selected like the clips do for example. This is something I really look at implementing in the future though and hopefully will be possible to do soon.
Thanks!

Hello,
Slate has paths which can be created in 3D space and which can be used for objects to move along. As such, you can put a Camera Shot to follow a 3D Path, yes.

Thanks.

 

Just felt compelled to say, after using Slate for a few weeks, it is awesome. It has improved my workflow, I've had no troubles integrating it with my existing tools, and writing custom Action Clips is straightforward and powerful. Being able to scrub playback in the editor is immeasurably helpful, and Slate is stable and responsive. Thanks for making things a little bit easier!

 

Thanks it's awesome.
By default timeline is set to 20, how can I increase it? I can't find where should I increase timeline.

 

Thank you very much for your time writing such a positive feedback! I'm super glad to know you enjoy it and helps your project workflow. I really do appreciate it and further motivates me to keep pushing Slate forward.
Once again, Thank you very much!

Hey,

Thanks!
You can either click and drag the white length marker arrow, or control click in the timebar to set the length marker there instantly without dragging it. If the length marker is outside of the timeline view area, you can of course first pan the view area left/right either by middle mouse down and drag, or by holding down ALT+click and drag.

Please let me know if that works for you.
Cheers.

 

Thank you it worked by holding down alt+click and dragging.

 

You are very welcome

 

Build Android

Log Error

Found plugins with same names and architectures, Assets/ThirdParty/ParadoxNotion/SLATE Cinematic Sequencer/Utility/UTJ/Plugins/x86_64/AlembicImporter.dll () and Assets/ThirdParty/ParadoxNotion/SLATE Cinematic Sequencer/Utility/UTJ/Plugins/x86/AlembicImporter.dll (). Assign different architectures or delete the duplicate.

Please Help

 

Hello,

Please find and delete the folder "ParadoxNotion/Slate Sequencer/Utilities/UTJ/Plugins" and you will be able to build fine.
This error is already fixed for the next version.
Thanks!

 

Hi again, I have one more question. Is there a way to select multiple keyframes on an actor, so I can copy and paste?

 

Hello again,
Even though you can select multiple keyframes of a property track and manipulate them like shown bellow, copy/pasting multiple keyframes is not implemented yet. More of a oversight on my part, which I've just noted down to implement in future update.


Thanks for reminder/suggesting of adding this.

 

Hi,

I have a question regarding the Animator track, it says that you need GameObjects without Controller on the Animator to work, but obviously all the GameObjects that are animated in the game have a controller while they are not on a cutscene and I'll need to remove it during cutscenes, is there any way to handle this on Slate or do I have to manage it myself?

On that note, I supose this means that you cannot use Animator tracks and Mecanim tracks together right? It might be nice to have some kind of warning saying this, I didn't notice at first and the cutscenes were crashing.

Edit to say that a lot of times while working with the Animator track if I click play it crashes Unity.

 

Hi @nuverian,

I've been using slate for about a month now, overall its a great asset and very well put together, I also love how easy it is to extend with many of my own clip types. The way the camera switching is handled took a while to get used to as did the audio source pool but I can see the thinking there.

Some easy bugs I've noticed;
If a sub cutscene doesn't have a director camera track it throws a null reference exception
Many clips if set to length zero will throw an NaN due to dividing by the length
The Ease class uses Unitys Lerp functions, which are clamped between 0-1, so Ease.Back and Ease.Elastic don't work as expected
Cutscene length is clamped to a minimum of 1 second, not sure why
RotateTo doesn't have a space option like the rest of the transform clips
Its probably not necessary to draw both the icon and the sphere gizmo for a cutscene (those spheres can be quite distracting)
Calling cutscene.Sample(0f) should set the cutscene to its state at time 0f, currently it just returns out I think

I've also had occasional problems duplicating cutscenes and making cutscenes with prefabs but haven't nailed the causes yet.
A selection uGUI clip types would also be a useful feature, as would a button or something to snap the end of a cutscene to the end of its last clip.

Great asset and I hope you keep working on it

 

I like this asset! Very useful (I guess the best one in assets store). But I have a great question... How can I use camera effect (those we can find in Unity Standard Assets) in the cameras shot of Slate? Camera effects like: Tonemapping, Antialiasing, Glow, Blur motion.... and so one. I tried attaching them in the Camera shot in inspector, but I doesn't work at all. So, I want to add some visual effects to my cinematics.

 

@Btok365 you can apply those effects to the "Render Camera", which is a child of "Director Camera Root" in the hierarchy.

 

Hey,

You can indeed not use an Animator and a Mecanim Track together. I agree with you and I will certainly need clarify that with a warning.

Regarding the requirement of the Animator Track to not have a Controller assigned, it was mostly due to a Unity known bug. That bug though is now resolved in Unity 5.4 final version and as such I have already modified Slate and in the next version it will automatically handle this. Thus you will be able to have a Controller assigned to the Animator of a cutscene actor with no problems.
The Animator Track related crashes are also resolved as well in Unity 5.4 + next version of Slate.

Thanks!

Hey,

Thanks a lot! I am really glad you like Slate
Also thanks a lot for the bug reports and suggestions:

- If a sub cutscene doesn't have a director camera track it throws a null reference exception.
Fixed.

- Many clips if set to length zero will throw an NaN due to dividing by the length.
Fixed.

- The Ease class uses Unitys Lerp functions, which are clamped between 0-1, so Ease.Back and Ease.Elastic don't work as expected.
Fixed.

- Cutscene length is clamped to a minimum of 1 second, not sure why.
I have to clamp the length at some point and I simply chose 1 sec by design. I though this was a good minimum length to have, although I can certainly make it less.

- RotateTo doesn't have a space option like the rest of the transform clips.
Hmm. The RotateTo does not really need a Space parameter, since the TargetRotation is the final local rotation of the object, so it's irrelevant to where the Cutscene Root is for example. Did you maybe misunderstood the clip's functionality for something else? Or maybe I did

- Its probably not necessary to draw both the icon and the sphere gizmo for a cutscene (those spheres can be quite distracting).
The icon should normally sit above the sphere, but in any case, I've made the sphere it smaller now.

- Calling cutscene.Sample(0f) should set the cutscene to its state at time 0f, currently it just returns out I think.
Cutscene time of 0f (thus Sample(0f)), is by design used to indicate that the cutscene is not playing/sampled right now. Basically 0, means that nothing has happened as far as the cutscene is concerned and is already the minimum time value the cutscene is when at rest. The smallest active sample time is actually float.Epsilon if you want to sample it at it's exact beginning. I hope this is not a big deal for you

- A selection uGUI clip types would also be a useful feature
Do you mean a selection of UGUI clips for controlling things like Slider value for example? If so such these can already be animated with the Properties Track or the Animate Properties clip, but maybe you mean something different. If so, please let me know what.

-..a button or something to snap the end of a cutscene to the end of its last clip.
I've just added this in the new right click context menu of the length marker.

Please let me know of those duplication and prefab issues you are facing once you find the issue. I will of course also take a look at this once again. Maybe I missed something (hopefully not).

Finally, I will definitely keep working on Slate! There is even a new version with some important changes and new features coming very soon (which of course will also include the above changes based on your feedback). I will make a post about it soon as well.

( By the way, I had PA Particle Field in my radar for some time now, so I just grabbed a copy of it since it looks really awesome )

Thanks again!

Hello,

Thanks! I am glad you like Slate!
Just like @flashframe mentioned, you can attach all image effects you need on the "Render Camera" child object of the "Director Camera Root". This is the camera from within the whole cutscene is rendered from. As such image effects only need to be added and set once and they will also be consistent across all camera shots
Thanks again!

Thanks for helping out

 

Hi Gavalakis,
How it's going with the runtime allocation changes we discussed via mail? Will they come in the next version?

 

Hello,
It is a very great asset SLATE.
I thought that SLATE is the ultimate cut scene tool of Unity.

I have a question.
In my cut scene, the camera must be approached very close to the character.
Is there a way to change the Clipping Planes of the preview screen of inspector of camera shot?

Thanks.

 

Hey,

Sorry for the late reply!
I will try to squeeze those in the upcoming version, although I would like to send it out ASAP due to the big list of changes. So probably these will come in the immediate next one. Sorry :/

Hello,

Thanks a lot! I am very glad you like Slate!
To change the clipping planes of the Shot preview, please select the Shot Camera gameobject and change the clipping planes in it's Camera component inspector as normal. This will essentially change only the preview, since that camera component settings are not used otherwise.
You can select the Shot Camera quickly, by hitting the "Find In Scene" button in the Camera Shot Inspector, or by double clicking the Camera Shot Clip.

Please let me know if you need more help.
Thanks again!

 

Planning to use SLATE with some heavy camera and simulation effects that will drop total fps. Will be possible to render a sequence exporting single frames, so to create later a video with the desired frame rate?
Edit: ok read about EXR image sequence .

 

Hey!
Yes, You can render a PNG or EXR image sequence with the included Render Utility in Slate, and of course later composite in your favorite application
If you need any help of course, let me know.
Cheers!

 

The new SLATE version 1.5.0 is live on the asset store!

Probably the biggest, but certainly not the only change here is the ability to Edit Motion Trail Curves directly in the scene view! This is true for all and any motion trail of any clip of course. The label shown along the keyframes are the local time of the keyframes in the clip.

​

While the above will probably make the previous 'Path' objects obsolete, they are still quite supported and also get the following changes:

• Paths have now option for Constant/Uniform Speed interpolation.
• Added option to "Use Speed" in Follow Path clip.
• Added BlendOut option in Follow Path clip.
• Added new clip "Animate On Path" to manually animate "Position" and 'Look At Target Position' along a Path.

Further Changes Include:

• Added "Exit Camera" override feature in Camera Track, which allows the cutscene to Blend Out to (or enable) a different gameplay camera than the one it started with.
• Exposed Blend Interpolation option in Camera Track for when blending in/out of gameplay camera, which was previously always set by default to 'Quadratic In Out'. Now it can be set to anything desired.
• Camera Shot Inspector preview and thumbnails will now both respect chosen resolution aspect ratio in Game View Window and show exactly what will be shown in game.
• Animator Track no longer needs to remove the AnimatorController reference and is now handled automatic by Slate.
• Added Update Method option per cutscene (Normal, AnimatePhysics, UnscaledTime).
  
• Added new Cutscene StopMode (Hold).
• Added "Set Key Editable" in keyframe context menu. When setting key back to Editable from Smooth mode, original tangents will be preserved.
• Added CutsceneSequencePlayer quick script, for playing a series of cutscenes in order.
• Minimum version is now Unity 5.4.

And of course some fixes:

• Fixed: Animator Track Root Motion from being inaccurate the first time cutscene is sampled.
• Fixed: Animator Track RootMotion for when cutscene length was less than the last animation clip in the track.
  
• Fixed: Cutscene playing from being disabled/enabled for 1 frame when it is set to Loop or Ping Pong mode.
• Fixed: Easing Interpolation that was clamped to 0-1 (affecting Bounce, Elastic and similar interpolation modes).
• Fixed: Null reference exception in SubCutscene clip when SubCutscene had no Camera Track.
• Fixed: Error when setting position to NaN.
• Fixed: Prefab Actor Group from disabling the prefab in some cases.
• Fixed: MacOS context click in action clips that were not working.
• Fixed: Fading out from a cutscene, that the next cutscene was remaining faded out.
• Fixed: Resampling error for when group had null actor.
• Fixed: Animation Track layer from adding +10 to layer on each resample. :/Fixed: Image sequence rendering delta time frame skipping.
• Fixed: Look Through Camera Shot feature from accidentally creating keyframes.
• Fixed: Cutscene is now force stopped when the Render button is pressed, before start rendering.
• Fixed: Crash when disabling an actor with Animator Component while playing cutscene.
• Fixed: Offline Rendering that was not working correctly in editor for Unity 5.4.
• Fixed: Windows Apps 10 support.

Cheers and have fun!

 

there is absolutely no way to make them work with 5.3.6p3? i would love to get the fixes, but cant update to 5.4 because of stability and compatibility with other plugin.

 

Hello Damien,
I am making the modifications to work with 5.3 now and will submit the package again. PM me an email to send it to you when it's ready so that you don't have to wait the asset store approval.

 

Some minor bug I noticed. When first opening a scene made with the old version(don't know if recreating with the new change anything) in the editor while scrubbing all I see in the game window is "no camera rendering", the preview in the timeline update just fine. If I hit play then stop the game window work fine from then on, so it's some initialization issue, very minor but I thought I'll let you know.

By the way, why don't you share your test scenes? Even with simple cubes and nothing fancy, just to quickly play around and see the features.
Waiting for the new API to remove runtime allocation, please

 

Ah, thanks for letting me know. I will check this out and see what might cause this. It looks like that the "Main Camera" in the scene get's disabled.(?)
I would prefer to create and share some more fancy/good looking example scenes than cubes, due to the nature of the plugin I hope I get the time to make such one up soon.
The improvement in allocations is also coming around
Thanks!

 

@nuverian
do have plans to integrate SLATE with Cinemachine Base Rig?

Thanks.

 

would be even better if this was a built in feature of slate as its seems to be in the scope of what slate do. for the sake of keeping slate workflow simple and waste time jumping between plugins.

 

I am interested in getting fluids into Unity from Maya through Alembic. And I would be using SEGI and the VR Panorama 360 camera to get a Pano video. Is there a way to do this using your tools? Could I child the VR Pano 360 camera with SEGI attached to it to your camera to render with your animations to see the Alembic from Maya. Or would the VR Pano 360 camera just follow your camera and not see the Alembic? Or do you have a better workflow?
You will have another customer if I can get fluids from Maya and VR working together. My drive is a movie not a game. Thanks

 

Hey,

Yes, I have already contacted Cinemachine author regarding an integration between the two products, but like @Damien-Delmarle suggested, there is already some native "Dynamic Camera" features planned for Slate, like automatic subject framing for example.
Cheers!

Hey,

Yes, you will be able to do this just fine. While I haven't tested with VR Panorama 360 asset specifically, I have done so with other similar assets. You could attach the 360 VR Rig under the "Director Camera Root" in Slate and as such have it follow the Slate cutscene camera animation. Imported Alembic will also be visible since after import, techincaly they are just normal meshes in the scene, thus can be rendered from any camera.

Let me know if you need more details
Cheers!

 

That sounds just like what I was hoping for. I was going to render the VR from Maya, but I am running out of time. Plus Maya would take a while to get the 4K render finished. With your plugin I can get the fluids into Unity from Maya and render it in 4K in a short amount of time. Plus have your tools to animate the camera as well as anything else I need in Unity. Heading to the Asset Store to become a customer. Thanks.

 

Ok I bought it but for some reason I can place my VR camera in the scene and build a simple camera animation using your tools. But when I hit play my camera gets shut off, so it will not capture even using its capture button. I have also tried to attach the scripts to your camera and they get turned off on play as well. I noticed on your forums that you used the 360 VR free camera to test and it worked. Could you share some workflows? I have noticed that there are only 3 tutorials on YouTube but they are in Korean and I have watched the first one but he is too specific on small things to sit and watch for 45 minutes. I mean I appreciate the fact that he spent time showing your tools but 15 minutes of moving a sphere forward and backward. And that is only guessing what he is talking about. I can animate my own cameras so I am hoping that by using the Alembic import I can use that without using your tools for this scene, since it is due out next week. Then I will have time to figure out how to use your tools. Thanks

 

So I guess I would need some advice on how to attach the 360 camera to yours, or keep the scripts awake on your camera. And how to tell the Alembic Fluid to start when it is supposed to in the scene.

 

Hey,

Thanks a lot for getting Slate.
All scripts in the Director Camera Root are disabled on awake, but they will all be enabled when any cutscene is start playing. A cutscene of course can be played either by the play button in the editor, or through scripting. There is also a help script included to start a cutscene when the game starts, which you can create through the top menu ("Tools/ParadoxNotion/Slate/Extra/Create Cutscene Started").
So, once again, all scripts Components under Director Camera Root, will be active only for as long as any cutscene is actively playing.

So a simple workflow without script for your case, would be to:
- Start the game.
- Begin the cutscene through the Slate editor Play button.
- Select the VR Capture script of VRPanorama 360 asset and start the Render.

You could of course also automate this with some script of course if VRPanorama 360 asset offers an API function to start the render. I don't know what functions VRPanorama 360 asset offers, but it would probably look something like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using Slate;
3.  
4. public class Example : MonoBehaviour {
5.  
6.     public Cutscene cutscene;
7.     public VRCapture capturer;
8.  
9.     void Start(){
10.         cutscene.Play();
11.         capturer.Render();
12.     }
13. }

Please let me know if that works for you.

Also, please let me know what you mean about "playing Alembic when it is supposed to". Have you imported an Alembic File, created an Alembic Track in the Director Group and assigned the imported Alembic in that track inspector?


Let me know.
Thanks again.

 

Hey,
First I love Slate and it's a brilliant tool

Now a question/help kinda thing.
I've created a path, put a camera on it (or even just a default cube for testing) and while the intended object is following the path it's rotation remains unchanged as the path curves around.
What I would like to do is like with your example as the cube that follows the path also rotates/looks at the paths direction.
Did I miss something or do I have to manually animate the look at part?

Thx.

 

Just to be sure: want to render video with resolution greather than my actual display.
I.e. I have currently a display with resolution 1440x900 but want to render FullHD 1920x1080 video, that's possible with SLATE I suppose.
Reading this documentation "13. Offline rendering" appear to be so, simply not sure what's the difference with "online" rendering...

 

Hey,

Thanks a lot! I am very glad you like Slate
There is a parameter on the Follow Path action clip called "Look Ahead". By default it is set to 0, but if you increase it, it will make the gameobject look ahead in the direction it is moving on the path. (try to keep a very low value for that by the way).

Let me know if that works for you.
Thanks!

Hello!

Yes, you can render a PNG or EXR image sequence in any resolution that is set in your game window on the top, while the actual game window resolution does not matter at all! Once again, this is true only for PNG and EXR image sequences. GIF and AVI do not respect this resolution and are meant only for preview.

The word "Offline" is just to distinguish it (in terms) from the Realtime rendering that takes place in gameplay and nothing more

Thanks!

 

Hi again, how to pause timeline from counting at a certain point?

 

Hey,

Here is a new ActionClip for that:

PauseCutscene.cs

Code (CSharp):

1. namespace Slate.ActionClips{
2.  
3.     [Category("Utility")]
4.     public class PauseCutscene : DirectorActionClip {
5.         protected override void OnEnter(){
6.             if (UnityEngine.Application.isPlaying){
7.                 (root as Cutscene).Pause();
8.             }
9.         }
10.     }
11. }

You can add this clip in a Director Action Track and can be found under the "Utility" category.
I will probably include this in the next version as well.

Let me know if this works for you.
Cheers!

 

Also, please let me know what you mean about "playing Alembic when it is supposed to". Have you imported an Alembic File, created an Alembic Track in the Director Group and assigned the imported Alembic in that track inspector?


Let me know.
Thanks again.

Thanks for your replies,

I thought I would disappear and get a little closer to importing into Unity. The Alembic file is just under 50G. and I used your import to get the [Alembic(ConcPour.abc)] into the scene. But this is where I was talking about "Playing the Alembic" when it is suppose to. You mentioned that when imported it is basically an object like anything else and any camera would see it. But when I get to the frame in which the concrete is suppose to be pouring, nothing happens. So am I suppose to create a Alembic Track like the pic above? Remember I am not using your cut-scene cameras so how would I get the Alembic to play in Unity and be rendered by my 360 Pano camera? I would need a good description of how to create a track and how to get that track to play at frames 700-1800 if I am to use your editor. Thanks.

 

Hi, how is the SteadyCam supposed to work? I am clicking it in my shots but nothing is happening. I can also not find in the documentation what the options in the Render Camera actually do. Do they influence what is happening with the optional steadycam in the shots?

 

Hey,

Yes, you need to create an Alembic Track and assigned the imported [Alembic(ConcPour.abc)] object to the Alembic Track's inspector. Only after this is done, when the cutscene time changes, the alembic file will correctly be sampled at that time.


To create an Alembic Track, you simply need to press the "+" button on the Director Group and select Alembic Track. Then select the track and in it's inspector drag&drop the imported [Alembic(ConcPour.abc)].


Important: Make sure that your source alembic files, are always located in a folder named "StreamingAssets" under your root "Assets" project folder.

From there on, if you want the cutscene (and thus your alembic file) to automatically play as soon as the game is started (entering play mode), you can simply create a Cutscene Starter script ("Tools/ParadoxNotion/Slate/Extra/Create Cutscene Started") and drag your Cutscene in the scripts inspector "cutscene" variable.


Entering Play Mode now, will play your cutscene along with your alembic file.

Let me know if these work for you.

Hey,

Right now the SteadyCam effect is only applied when there is at least one keyframe created for the shot's position and/or rotation, and only in Play Mode as well.

So, to make the SteadyCam effect take place, please create one keyframe for the shot's position and/or rotation.

I will change the SteadyCam effect to be applied regardless of the above in the next version, since that would be more convenient.

The "Shot Animation Mode" option is legacy and will be removed in future update. I really recommend leaving that option to the default "Use Internal"

Thanks!

 

what would be great is to be able to set the font of the GUI overlay and set precise placement on screen