Film, animation and cinematics

From independent boutiques to global media producers, studios around the world are harnessing the power of real-time rendering to speed up production, smooth workflow hurdles, and grow their creativity with Unity.

Animation Sizzle Reel 2021: creators using real-time animation today

Create. Iterate. Collaborate. In real time.

Unity brings real-time workflows to animation content creators – speeding up traditional pipelines and giving artists, producers, and directors more opportunities for creative freedom, fast feedback, and artistic iteration on a flexible platform. With Unity, real-time production is a reality.

Animation creators, meet Mich-L.

Have fun exploring the latest Cinematics features and tools that make Unity easier and more powerful for cinematic artists. Enjoy the short film, download the free project template, watch the demo, and more.

Why Unity?

More creative iteration

Unity’s real-time platform gives unprecedented creative freedom over traditional rendering pipelines. By realizing your vision as fast as you can create it – instead of waiting hours or days for rendering – you remove all barriers to artistic experimentation.

Wider integration

Pipeline devs can work with Unity out of the box or create a real-time workflow custom-made for a project using the broadest platform support available alongside extensive DCC compatibility and highly versatile scripting tools.

Faster production

With shared compositions, accelerated rendering, and plenty of options to automate the non-creative tasks in between, Unity makes it possible to deliver shots, scenes, or entire episodes in days instead of months.

Smarter decision-making

No more discovering mistakes too late – or agonizing over another decision to fix an error in post. Unity equips creators with the ability to see how your shot looks in the scene, right alongside the artist tools designed to easily make the tweaks you need.

Creation at scale

Meet the growing demand for content across platforms. With the ability to build, reuse, and easily iterate large volumes of assets in Unity, you can create an element once, then recreate or integrate it easily in all your related projects.

Smooth collaboration

Unity makes it possible for artists at every point of the pipeline to share the same project and see their changes immediately. Change once, see everywhere, and reduce errors and miscommunication.

Real timesavers for every artist in the studio

Integrate with your DCCs of choice

Exchange models, animations, cameras, lighting, and FX between Unity and most digital content creation tools. With Alembic, USD, and FBX workflows, you can work in real-time with the same formats as your asset pipeline and use the right file for any job.

Render beautiful visuals

Cinematic shots are in reach, even in real time. Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) puts professional lookdev and VFX tools in your artists’ hands, like physically based rendering, real-time ray tracing, visual shader creation, and next-level effects simulations.

Animate and edit with familiar toolsets

Control, experiment, and perfect how lights, cameras, and action come together in a scene. By orchestrating timing, angles, movements, and cues in real-time with the flexibility of Unity’s editing and sequencing tools, artists can bring their creations to life without coding.

Record final frames as fast as you watch them

You don’t have to wait for a render farm to deliver high-resolution video clips, validate image sequences, and easily generate multiple versions of your content. Get dailies out faster, shorten review cycles, or export for compositing, all with Unity’s lightning-fast recording tools.

Begin your journey into the metaverse today

Join us on the Road to the metaverse, a series of webinars and workshops designed to equip you with the tools to enable the digital transformation of your business.

Neth Nom, Director, Sonder

“Working in Unity’s real-time engine allowed me to give feedback and visually see changes on the spot. This frees up time to focus on story or other aspects of production.”

Neth Nom, Director, Sonder
Nathalie Martínez, Producer and Founder, Wise Blue Studios

“Production-wise, we dramatically reduced render time, which is now practically real-time. Unity also allowed us to streamline our workflow, reducing iterations and resources.”

Nathalie Martínez, Producer and Founder, Wise Blue Studios
Ben Purkis, CTO, Keyframe Studios

“We can create lots of content quickly while retaining high quality owing to reduced render times and a shortened feedback cycle – we can show clients changes in real-time.”

Ben Purkis, CTO, Keyframe Studios
Dirk Hampel, Founder, B-Water Studios (creator of Zafari and Treasure Trekkers)

“We learned as we went and at first it took a few weeks to get the environment to the quality we needed. Now we can create a full 11-minute episode every week!”

Dirk Hampel, Founder, B-Water Studios (creator of Zafari and Treasure Trekkers)
Simon J. Smith, Director of Penguins of Madagascar and Baymax Dreams

"I love the fact that I can touch every facet of audiovisual storytelling in one place, at the same time. The simplest way to describe working in Unity is pure creation.” 

Simon J. Smith, Director of Penguins of Madagascar and Baymax Dreams
Nathan Thomas, Senior Animator, Industrial Light & Magic, and creator of Norman’s Island

“Unity’s greatest asset is giving creators the flexibility to explore ideas and visuals in the blink of an eye. It opens up a world where exploration and play result in a better product.”

Nathan Thomas, Senior Animator, Industrial Light & Magic, and creator of Norman’s Island
Stephen Cooney, Visual Effects Artist and Engineer

“Unity is a dream. The flexibility in Unity enables savvy artists to realize ideas that would be logistically prohibitive in other engines.”

Stephen Cooney, Visual Effects Artist and Engineer
Try it for yourself

Cinematics project template

Download a cinematic scene from Mich-L, an animation short produced by our friends at Plip ! Animation and Studio Manette, and get started on creating your own animation with Unity. In this lightweight project, you’ll use features including Sequences, Recorder, Timeline, and Cinemachine – the foundations for cinematic creation.

Download the project

The making of a scene

Get the low-down on how the Sherman animated Unity demo was made. Part 1 covers the short’s creation, animation blocking, lookdev, and camera layout. Part 2 explores using Alembic for character animations, Visual FX Graph, and the fur implementation. Part 3 teaches you everything you need to know to get started with real-time cinematic lighting.

Read part 1
Read part 2
Read part 3

Ready for real-time?

Let’s get started.

From workflow and integration to training and support, we can help you with everything you need to transform your pipeline for real-time creation.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. Visit our cookie policy page for more information.

Got it