Unity Developer — Dolly Tracks

If you have put in the time to study up on Cinemachine and Timeline in Unity, you most likely saw just how great these tools can be. It is these tools that have allowed developers to make amazing cutscenes and even award winning films within the Unity engine. Let’s take a look at one more trick to help your directing skills in Unity.

Introducing the Dolly Track. Many times when you see a high speed shot on the silver screen, maybe following a car chase or someone running for their lives, it is not just a camera man following as fast as they can on their own two feet. It is usually some sort of dolly track. Think of it like a small roller coaster. The camera is attached to the seat and then follows along at the speed they set. We can use this same technique for our cutscenes.

You can add a dolly track to the scene with the Cinemachine tab at the top. This will also add a virtual camera to your scene, unless you already have on you want to use on the dolly, in which case you can delete the new one.

On the dolly track, you can create a set number of waypoints. Click and drag them around the scene to figure out just the right path you want it to take. It is like playing Roller Coaster Tycoon!

With new waypoints added, you will see a green track like the above. You can also change this color in the Inspector to your liking. When moving the waypoints, one of the anchors you can move will change the curvature.

When your path is set, go to your virtual camera and set the ‘path’ in the Body section to be new dolly track. You may have to change the Body to ‘Tracked Dolly’ for this to work.

That’s it! Now any path you can imagine is available to you. Make some excellent swooping shots, or follow a crashing car in a dramatic cutscene. Your creatively has even less bounds than before.