Black fade at start of cutscene in Unity

Objective: Create a fade to black effect in a cutscene

Above in the game window you can see the effect. It is a short fade that starts out at fully opaque but then moves to transparent.

This is achieved very easily, first create a UI -> image and set the colour to black. Then change the anchor elements of the image to be stretched across the whole game scene.

Click the anchor point, and select the icon in the bottom right corner, then hold shift and select the icon again, then hold shift and alt and click it a third time. This will adjust the anchor points and stretch the image across the whole canvas.

Now make sure that the newly created canvas is set to adjust with the screen size. Then drag the canvas and drop it into the cutscene folder. This will keep it separate from any other canvas elements.

Now select your cutscene and make sure you can see the timeline window.

Add an animation track and drag in the image object. This will give you the option to attach an animator to the image object. Once that is done we just need to record the changes to the image and we’re done.

Select the record button on the new animation track and then select the image object. Now change the alpha of the colour from 255 to another number and back to 255. This will create the first keyframe in the animation. Now move the white arrow that lets you scrub through your cutscene and select the point that you want the fade to happen. Then go back into the image object and change the alpha to 0.

That is it. Your black fade is now ready to role. Click the play button and you should now see your fade happen at the point you selected.