Cutting Room is a plugin for Unity developed by Digital Creativity Labs at the University of York which allows creators to build and deploy Object Based Media productions.
This latest version of Cutting Room is actually a complete rewrite based off our previous work. It has been redesigned on a fundamental level, moving away from a time driven system to an event driven system. For many users the impact of this change will not be obvious and this is intentional. Cutting Room can still be used to make time based interactive video based narratives, but now the system is free to be driven by more than just time. For video or audio this means reacting to user interactions or implementing mechanisms such as pause or skip are much simpler. Beyond this though it also unlocks the ability for Cutting Room to be used beyond time based media, for example in gaming scenarios (See Advanced Samples).
Cutting Room now has a custom Node based editor built into Unity, powered by the Unity GraphView library and a custom Inspector for Cutting Room elements. The editor makes planning and structuring your Object Based Media project much easier. The inspector hides the complexities of the Unity inspector and presents Cutting Room users with only the essential information they need to see. These new tools make creating OBM projects easier than ever and can be used even by those who are not familiar with Unity.
Download the latest Cutting Room Unity Package.
When installing the package to your own project, you also need to add the following to the manifest.json of your own project:
"com.unity.inputsystem": "1.4.4"
"com.unity.nuget.newtonsoft-json": "3.0.2"
and if you want to use the VR support you will need to enable VR support in your project and you can add the XR interaction toolkit to your manifest.json as:
"com.unity.xr.interaction.toolkit": "2.4.1"
If you want
- Ensure that you have Git LFS installed.
- Clone or fork the repository:
https://github.com/Digital-Creativity-Labs/CuttingRoom.git - Open the project with Unity (2021.3.X or above).
- Open the Cutting Room Editor and Inspector from the
Cutting Roommenu in the menu bar. - Build your own productions and share them with us via one of our communities.
Work in progress
Samples are available within the Assets/Samples/CuttingRoom directory of the repository. This includes the VideoNarrative sample scene which showcases an interactive video with a button UI using all of the node types. You can also find samples utilising 360 video in a 2D and VR in the Immersive folder. The Advanced folder contains examples of using cutting room to change a 3D game scene, although these require a more advanced understanding of unity.
We love seeing pull requests with new features or bug fixes so please feel free to fork the repository and create these if you have something to share with us. Once received, we will examine each one and if satisfied, merge them into the main repository with our thanks.
You can join us and other Cutting Room creators in the following communities:
- Join and discuss Cutting Room and Object Based Media on Slack.
- Create and read threads about Cutting Room on Reddit.
- Follow and tweet us @CuttingRoomOBM on Twitter.
We are always on the look out for new partners to work with to develop innovative and novel products using Cutting Room. If you would like to speak to us about a potential collaboration please reach out to us at CuttingRoom-toolkit@york.ac.uk.
If you encounter an issue or just need clarification on existing functionality, please make us aware of this by submitting an issue through Github and we will do our best to provide assistance.
This tool was developed by Digital Creativity Labs at the University of York.
Code and documentation copyright 2015-2022 Digital Creativity Labs and University of York.
Code is released under the Apache 2.0 Licence.