While Posing and Animation covers animation of characters and props, cinematography covers animation of cameras, including topics such as shot composition. Related is also Lighting and Visual Effects which covers position of lights in a scene and other once off visual effects that are not directly camera related.
Blog Posts
Selecting Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO) HDRP volume settings in Unity
Ambient occlusion is a lighting effect that increases shadows where two surfaces meet. In real life, there is less light bouncing around surfaces in corners or where two walls meet – this is called ambient occlusion. As I am aiming for semi-realistic images in my videos (not 2D cel shading as in most comics and…
Rain, raindrops, puddles, and water in Unity HDRP
One effect I used in my first episode is rain to amplify the mood. This involved raindrops on glass windows, rain falling from the sky, and ripples/puddles of rain on the ground. Here is an example shot with rain falling from the sky, glistening in the lights, with puddles rippling on the ground (although the…
Lighting Tricks in Unity HDRP for Cinematic Effect
I am creating a simple animated cartoon using Unity and the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). One challenge that comes up is how to control the lighting levels of shots – how to make it look “good”, and consistent with neighboring shots in a sequence. Unity with HDRP provides a number of tools that can…
Unity HDRP Lighting, Exposure, and the Sequences Package
In this post I describe how I am planning to get the exposure right when using the Unity Sequences package with the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). My goal is to create a simple animated cartoon using Unity as an evening hobby project. I am in the process of upgrading my project from the built…
HDRP Shader Graph and Wind Zones
I am (slowly!) working on creating an animated cartoon series using Unity 3D to animate the characters. I am upgrading the project from the older Unity built-in render pipeline to the latest High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP), which is forcing me to re-learn how to achieve various effects. I wrote up a recent blog mentioning…
Wind in HDRP – my journey so far
Added Aug 20, 2022: Please note: This post can still be interesting, but if you want my final answer, check out this newer post. One of the unexpected areas of change when upgrading my Unity project from the built in render pipeline to HDRP was that Wind support is now different. My existing trees with…
The use of camera movements
There are many great resources out there on how to move the camera for a great camera shot. Here I share a few videos introducing the basic concepts and then get into when to use those concepts. Basic camera shots Bloop Animation shared this video on The basics of camera shots (most common ones you…
HDRP Depth of Field with moving targets
Depth of field is a Unity camera effect in allows you to blur the background and foreground, creating greater focus on your character. I recently wrote an article about how to achieve depth of field in HDRP (which I am going to assume you have already read), but upgrading the opening shot of my series…
HDRP Camera Depth of Field Effects (blur)
I am in the process of upgrading my Unity project from the Built in Render Pipeline to the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). HDRP does some effects differently, one of which is the Depth of Field effect which is useful for background (or foreground) blurring. (I have blogged on effects like this previously, for the…
Lighting for Cartoon Animation in Unity
I am using Unity with VRoid Studio characters to create a series of cartoon episodes. Unity supports “real time” and “baked” lighting. So which to use when creating animated videos? Baked lighting is particularly useful for games to be played on a mobile device with limited power. So it is good to use on unmoving…
Designing Scene Shots with Lens Settings in Unity
I subscribe to MasterClass.com and a new lesson series from James Cameron was just released (yes *the* James Cameron) where one of the lessons talked about focal lens. (I also came across a great YouTube channel with some great videos on tricks of the trade for movie making from StudioBinder including some of these points…
Extra Ordinary, the Series 