These days, games and films are connected more than ever. We see games are getting more cinematic and more narrative-driven where players feel like they are playing in a movie. The other way around can be said, thanks to the advancement of game engines today. With game engines like Unity and Unreal, a lot of filmmakers have been using them to either plan for their films (pre-viz & virtual production) or actually make their short films and TV shows with them. In this article, we will talk about the latter, the TV Shows and short films that used Unity.
Why Unity specifically? Because I’ve been using it for the past decade and a half and I feel it doesn’t get enough credits for its advancement in the film industry. One more reason is that Unity can be modestly light that almost any average PC & laptop can run it. Though the more complex your project gets, the heavier Unity gets. In another article we will talk about how Hollywood filmmakers used Unity to plan their movies (Spielberg’s Ready Player One and Jon Favreau’s The Lion King & Jungle Book).
The following projects will show you how Unity was used based on different scopes, budgets, and styles when creating their short films and shows. Before starting, I would like to thank the amazing, talented, and humble Mathieu Muller from Unity for always answering my questions regarding Unity filmmaking and providing me with rich information (including info about some of these projects).
Realistic CGI
Let’s start with the realistic short films that tried to reach the best realistic look and breaking the limits of that gen and year.
Time Ghost (2025)
First, we have Time Ghost (2025), which is a stunning Unity short film made by the demo team at Unity to showcase Unity 6 (2025). Just look at the hair flex.
Enemies (2022)
Then we have Enemies (2022), another stunning cinematic short by the Unity demo team. It was released in 2022 and I believe it has surpassed the uncanncy valley. You may realize it’s CGI at the end of the video, if you actually noticed. Again, this is happening in real-time. We are talking about at least 60 frames rendered every second.
The Heretic (2019)
Back in 2019, Unity released their most impressive short film at the time, showing realistic human character in their short The Heretic (2019) which showed other impressive features like importing alembic simulations (see how you can do that too) into a real-time game engine where everything you see is happening right now, and you can simply change the lighting, atmosphere, camera position, lens, and more, without the need to re-render anything!
Adam (2016)
This is when Unity really showed us how cinematic it can be. Collaborating with hollywood director, Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Gran Turismo, Elysium) and his studio (Oats). Together they created a 3 episodic short films/limited series. You can watch them on YouTube or Netflix.
Stylized
When talking about real-time filmmaking, the focus has been mostly on the most “realistic” and “futuristic” look that can handle big crowds and closeup details and so on. All of that is cool, but sometimes we forget that CGI films could also be “cartoony” like they have always been. Now we will see the other style, the cartoony/pixar-ish style that can be achieved.
Baymax Dreams
This was a an emmy award winning animation show created by Disney.
Giant Bear (2018/2019) – Experimental Style
Giant Bear is a short film with 12 mins runtime, that was rendered in Unity game engine. As you can see the style is unique, feels like it was handdrawn and colored frame by frame.
WiNDUP (2019)
Here we have this award winning short film that didn’t only capture the Pixar look, but also the warm and emotional storytelling of Pixar movies. Watching this short film reminds you of the beauty of cartoony CGI films and how warm they feel.
Sherman (2019)
This short animation will remind you of the funny and cute films from DreamWorks (Over the Hedge & Madagascar). One of the notable features of this short film is the “fur” shader on the protagonist racoon.
Stop Motion Style
Here we have two kids TV shows where they have the stop motion look, one of which, is actually produced by Aardman, the studio that created Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run.
Big Lizard
Big Lizard is an animated kids TV show that is broadcasting/streaming on France 5, BBC, and RTBF.
Sam & Julia
Before creating “Big Lizard”, the same studio created another kid show, Sam & Julia. They utilized Unity’s HDRP to achieve their desired look. It was also broadcasted on mutliple channels.
In this image (property of Studio Manette) we see a behind the scenes look at their timeline & light setup in Unity.
Created by yours truly
I have been using Unity for the past 15 years, and in the last 5 years or more I’ve been focusing a lot on its cinematic features. Playing with Cinemachine & Timeline and creating tons of tutorials about them on my YouTube channel. These tutorials even helped landing me jobs as a Cinematic Designer for game studios that were funded by Netflix & Apple Arcade. But here are some of the personal cinematic stuff I created with a shoe-string to no budget at all.
The Minervans (2022)
This short film was my biggest Unity cinematic project to date I think. It was a compressed 5 weeks or so for a tight deadline (for a competition). In this short film I utilized multiple features: Cinemachine, Timeline, Unity Live Camera for some movements, Unity AR Face Capture for a facial capture at the end, Cloth, and more. The cool thing about using a game engine for films is that you can use a lot of code (though you really don’t have to) to create and generate whatever you want.
I have used a grid generator to create the aliens and humans armies via script. I then created different blendshapes/morphs for the aliens that every time you start the film, it will give each alien in the army a different look (by tweaking the blendshapes & height). Anyways, here’s the short film. I’ve been thinking to create a behind the scenes video to talk about how it was created.
The Impossible Mission (2025) | Teaser
I was excited after watching the final MI movie, so I decided to create a tribute for the franchise by creating a short film or an action sequence in Unity. I started with this scene and then published it as a teaser for a possible (no pun intended) short film.
OB – Object Placer | Cinematic Trailer
As you can see I’m obsessed with filmmaking that I even created a “cinematic trailer” for my Unity plugin haha. The tool helps you place objects and characters with a single click. Which is why in the video you see tons of falling objects
Pre-Viz / Short Film | Unity Filmmaking 101 Course
This is not a badass short film or anything, it is bascially the output results from my course, Unity Filmmaking 101, which shows you how to use Unity from scratch and only use free available assets to create two cinematic videos. This could be a short film or a pre-viz. There are tons of things to add, like facial animations and so on. But for the scope of the course, I wanted to get students a boost start in less than 4hrs.
Check out the course if you’re interested:
https://courses.obalfaqih.com/courses/unity-filmmaking-101
More?
Even I cannot get enough of anything CGI Cinematic, especially if they were created using a real-time engine. It shows how you can use some tricks to still get at least 60 fps with stunning visuals. Here are more Unity short films, and VR Short Films made with Unity: View YouTube Playlist.
You have made short films with Unity? Or you think I missed other short films (not in the linked playlist too)? Please email me the links to those short films to show them here. This article will keep updating every now and then with latest Unity filmmaking stuff.
Conclusion
So to conclude this long list of projects made by Unity, I want to thank you first, for going through the list and getting here, thanks!
As you have seen yourself, Unity can create both realistic visuals as well as warm cartoony style short films. It all depends on you, the artist, the creative mind, the storyteller. One of the best things about Unity is that it can run on almost any average laptop or computer, at least you can start there then expand based on the complexity of your project.
If you’re interested in learning more about filmmaking with Unity, you can check out my Unity Filmmaking 101 course where we start from the very basics to creating two videos with Unity and more generic filmmaking tips. Email me your questions or if you want to discuss anything related from games to films, contact here.