CineShot Setup

CineShot Setup is a Unity editor tool for authoring camera moves without keyframing. Position the Scene View, press Set Camera, and shape the shot with sliders: orbit, crane, pan, dolly zoom, roll. Every move you like becomes a key; the sliders reset to zero and the next move continues from there. What normally means wrestling with the Animation window, tangents and dolly tracks becomes a handful of slider drags.

Everything happens in one dockable window (Tools > CineShot Setup): author the shot, shape its timing on a key timeline, cut several cameras into a trailer with transitions and music, bake the result to a standard AnimationClip, and hand it to Unity's Recorder for an MP4.

Key Features

Camera Setup
- Set Camera creates a CinemachineCamera at the current Scene-View position
- Automatic look-at detection: pick a target from the detected list, or hover the object directly in the Scene View and click it
- Pivot taken from the object's mesh bounds; LOD parts resolve to their root object
- Decouple / Couple to free-fly and lock back
- Optional Scene-View overlays: game frame and camera path
- Every camera remembers its own moves

Slider-Based Moves
- Orbit horizontal and Orbit vertical (°)
- Crane (m), Pan side, Pan up/down, Pan forward/backward (m)
- Zoom FOV (°) and Dolly Zoom (the vertigo effect)
- Roll, Yaw, Tilt (°) and Duration (s)
- Hold Shift while dragging for 10x finer steps (0.001 grid), Ctrl for 10x faster travel
- Keep View holds the framing while the camera travels
- Sliders are relative tools: they move the live camera away from its start pose, then + Add Key snapshots that pose

Timeline & Timing
- Key bars proportional to their duration, drag to change length
- Ease per key, cycled with one click: Smooth → Linear → Slow → Fast
- Separate ease-in / ease-out phase lengths, draggable as flags right in the key bar
- Key Reverse plays a key backwards, easing mirrored in time
- Per-channel mute via the eye icon, values stay intact and editable
- Shake/Noise per key: strength, speed, window (full length, start or end) and length, with a Game-View preview
- Continuity linter flags keys whose start jumps, with a plain-language fix hint
- Playhead scrubbing, Play All / Play Current, loop, Shift multi-select

Sequence (Trailer)
- Chain any number of cameras into one trailer
- Drag camera keys sideways to reorder the shots
- Transitions: Cut, Linear, Ease In, Ease Out, Ease In-Out, Fade Black
- Transition duration by dragging, in 0.1 s steps
- Impact shake per transition, anchored at the cut or after the blend, with preview
- Play the whole sequence in the editor, with loop
- Play selected Cam right next to Play Sequence, to compare one camera against the full trailer
- Clicking a shot jumps the time slider to that camera's start
- Playback also works in Play Mode, so you can watch moves together with particles and VFX that only simulate while the game runs

Audio
- Drop in a music clip and drag the waveform to shift it
- Plays along with Play and Play Sequence, scheduled and drift-locked
- Ends up in the recording if your Recorder preset captures audio

Bake & Record
- Bakes to a standard AnimationClip + AnimatorController
- Single camera, or a full multi-camera trailer baked onto a generated trailer camera
- Selectable bake FPS and output folder
- Bake status light: red = not baked or the baked result was deleted, yellow = changed since the bake, green = up to date
- Bake info shows the exact clip length and frame count, the number the Recorder's end frame wants
- Open Recorder makes the camera you are about to record the live one, hands over to Unity's Recorder window and uses your own settings unchanged

Data & Safety
- Stored per project in UserSettings/CineShotData.json, written atomically with a backup copy
- Export / Import as JSON; import merges by GlobalObjectId, so shared or backed-up moves land on the right cameras
- Undo support across camera, key and sequence edits
- While the window is open, Cinemachine's own camera frusta are hidden in the Scene View so they do not fight CineShot's game frame; the original gizmo settings are saved and restored when you close it

Intended For
- Solo developers and small teams making trailers, cutscenes and store videos
- Level and environment artists presenting their scenes
- Asset Store publishers producing showcase footage
- Anyone who wants a camera move without opening the Animation window

Not intended for
- Gameplay camera logic or runtime camera control
- Character or object animation
- Replacing Cinemachine, CineShot builds on it

Render Pipeline Support
✅ Built-in Render Pipeline
✅ Universal Render Pipeline (URP)
✅ High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP)

Depth-of-field auto-focus is carried over to the trailer camera on HDRP only. Everything else behaves identically in all three pipelines.

Note
CineShot Setup requires Cinemachine 3. The Unity Recorder is optional: without it the Record step is disabled and authoring, preview and baking work normally. A demo scene with three ready-made camera moves and a finished sequence is included, shipped once per render pipeline (HDRP, URP and Built-in), so you can watch the whole workflow before building your own.