As you probably know, a cinematic scene is a sequence generated in real-time, using the game engine, that narrates an important part of the story. Using cinematics has two significant advantages: on one hand, it saves the storage space required for pre-rendered video sequences; on the other hand, since it runs using the same assets as the rest of the game, there’s no risk of breaking the game's aesthetic, allowing smoother transitions between gameplay and cutscenes, and vice versa.
The course structures its 10 hours into five sections. In my opinion, the first two are the most interesting because they introduce genuinely new concepts. In the first section, it covers importing animations from Mixamo, explains the basics of rigging and skeletons (from Unity's perspective), and dives deeply into the Timeline. The second section is, in my opinion, the best because it thoroughly explains Unity's gem: the Cinemachine system. Specifically, it covers the use and transitions between multiple cameras, tracking cameras, "travelling" shots using Dolly Tracks, and automatic camera switching when a character leaves the field of view (the foundation of a camera system like the one in the first Resident Evil). All of this is explained clearly and in detail. I truly enjoyed that part.
The problem starts after that. The last three sections span just under seven hours of the course, but I think they could have been condensed into a third of that time. In these sections, the instructor stops introducing new concepts and focuses on illustrating the previously covered topics through examples. While this isn’t inherently bad, dedicating only 3.5 hours to introducing concepts and then spending over 6.5 hours repeatedly fine-tuning the same examples feels very unbalanced. It became quite tedious to keep making adjustments in the same windows just to frame the shot at the "cool" angle the instructor wanted. Admittedly, the examples are impressive, and you can tell the instructor enjoys polishing them, but I believe it would have been far more productive and engaging if he had stuck to simpler examples in favor of explaining more concepts that would fit within the course's scope. Topics like lighting, VFX (with VFX-Graph), or shaders are only briefly touched upon and could have been explored in more depth.
Additionally, the instructor has a very thick accent, making him hard to understand even if you're used to following courses in English. To make matters worse, the course lacks subtitles (which is unusual for GameDev.tv), so you can’t rely on them during moments when the instructor’s explanation isn’t clear. A real shame.
Therefore, my recommendation is to buy this course during a sale if you're curious about learning Cinemachine or Timeline, and focus on the first two sections. The following ones can be watched at double speed, slowing down only when the instructor does something genuinely new (which doesn’t happen often), or you can skip them altogether — in my opinion, you won’t miss much.
