Unity opened its Unity Europe event in Amsterdam today with a lengthy keynote (embedded above) that showcased some of the new features coming to the game engine, including the upcoming Timeline visual organization tool and a “smart camera system” called Cinemachine.
This is mostly of interest to Unity devs, who may already be familiar with some of the features demoed today since the latest version of Unity, Unity 2017.1, has been available in beta form since April.
But if you haven’t been following the company’s various blog posts and beta releases, it’s interesting to see that Timeline and Cinemachine got significant stage time at today’s keynote.
Cinemachine’s tech (which is available as a free plugin for Unity 2017.1) is especially intriguing because it promises to provide devs with a “unified procedural camera system” that’s easy to use for both in-game cameras and cinematic cameras.
The system is the brainchild of Adam Myhill, a game industry vet who spent years designing camera systems and working as a director of photography at Electronic Arts. He eventually left to found Cinemachine, which was acquired by Unity late last year.
Devs can find more info on Cinemachine, Timeline, and the other news out of Uniy Europe’s keynote over on the company blog. Today also marks the debut of the Unity 2017.1 release candidate (it’s scheduled for a proper release next month), and you can check that out via the Unity beta portal.