To get started with SLATE and creating a Cutscene simply navigate to “Tools/ParadoxNotion/SLATE/Create New Cutscene”. A new game object with the Cutscene component will be created in the scene.

There are only a few settings in the Cutscene inspector as explained below.

Update Mode

The Update Mode sets the time scale at which the cutscene will be updated and is very similar to the setting that exists on Unity’s Animator components.

• Normal will update the cutscene at the default Update loop. Slowing down time in your game for example will also slow down the cutscene playback rate. This is the default option.
• Animate Physics will update the cutscene at the same time that physics are updated in Unity (FixedUpdate). This is mostly useful if you are rendering a cutscene to an image sequence in play mode where physics objects are also visible from the cutscene camera. Using this setting will avoid physics objects from popping.
• Unscaled Time will update the cutscene irrelevant of the time scale. That means that if you for example you slow down time in your game, the cutscene will continue to play at its own playback rate and will not slow down.

Stop Mode

The StopMode sets what will happen when the cutscene stops for any reason, usually just because it ended. The options are:

• Skip will skip the cutscene to its end time and stay there, meaning that the cutscene will be sampled at its end time and thus all changes that it is meant to do in the game world, will take effect immediately and remain persistent until the cutscene is re-winded or re-played again.
• Rewind will revert any changes in the game world that were made by the cutscene while the cutscene was running to the initial state that they were before the cutscene started.
• Hold will simply halt the cutscene at its current time; like a pause.
• Skip Rewind No Undo will skip the cutscene to the end, then rewind the cutscene without reverting changes, all at once.

Wrap Mode

The WrapMode option sets how the cutscene is played back chosen from within these options:

• Once will simply play the cutscene once and then stop.
• Loop will loop the cutscene from the start once it has reached its end. In this mode the cutscene never stops automatically.
• Ping Pong will ping pong the cutscene forwards and backward. In this mode the cutscene also never stops automatically.

Playback Speed

This is simply the speed at which the cutscene is played back. This can be positive or negative.

Explicit Active Layers

When this option is turned on an extra option called “Active Layers” will show up. Only the gameobjects that belong to the selected layers will be visible while this cutscene is active while all others will be hidden. This affects only root gameobjects in the scene that have no parent.

Affected Group Actors

The affected actors of all groups of the cutscene will be listed here for convenience, through which you are free to change.

Hit Edit In Slate to open the editor if not already open!

Additionally, you need to please find the prefab named “@DirectorGUI” in the root Slate folder and add it in your scene as well. This GUI prefab is related to some cutscene clips which show subtitles, images, and other text overlays and is required to exist in the scene to get those showing up on the screen.