Back in the day, I would use game editors to make machinima films, such as Warcraft 3, StarCraft 2, Age of Mythology, etc… I really enjoyed animating this way because I could use the game assets, and define via logic what my scene would do. I could create new zones which triggered different animations, effects, etc because these all existed in game. For example, instead of playing a walking animation and also transforming the actor, I could just tell him to move to a specific position, and using the games pathfinding and built in logic, the actor would just move to that position… maybe even entering a zone which triggered a whole slew of stuff.
Since then I have tried my hand at regular animation, using iClone (from Reallusion). However, I really missed automatic events, actor AI, and programmable access.
So I want to try this with UE5. But can I make a cinematic, more like a short feature, programmatically as opposed to playing animations and transforming things around? Assuming I built a game character, and he/they have animations could I just have the character move to a certain position? Would events or triggers set up in the map level actually trigger if an actor enters a specific zone as opposed to the animator triggering these types of behaviour via a timeline? And if so, are there any good examples, tutorials, or learning resources on accomplishing this?
o/
Ofc you can make anything programmatically, it’s UE
Depends on how much time You want to put into it, as essentially besides learning cinematic’s & Sequencer you also need to learn blueprints scripting, animation graphs, probably some AI concepts, animating in engine, VFX & destruction and basic game framework.
For beginning try with Sequencer and it’s events + some blueprints scripting for triggers as you mention. Basic stuff can be found in Learning library, don’t be overwhelmed, it takes time, Unreal is a huge beast of an engine. From there I suggest picking some from Film & TV, Cinematics & Media to get a glimpse of how it is.
Yes, the Unreal Character class has built-in path navigation, so you can tell it to “move to location” or “move to actor” and it will do that.
Exactly how it animates, is set up in the animation blueprint for your character instance.
There are some standard blueprints that come with the editor templates (I’d suggest the top-down template for starters) but you may need to learn how to extend the animation blueprints if you want to add support for non-default movement, such as swimming and so on.
The Sequencer is the main timeline editor, and you can move things around with it if you want, but you can also use it to “send events” – and those events can be things you script, like “move to position X.”
You can also set up triggers in Unreal, with trigger volumes, particle effects, and so on. However, you don’t get those “for free” – you have to actually wire them up, which is a little lower level than a typical game editor, where the effects and actions are typically already pre-made, and you just pick one. So you’ll have to do a little bit of development to get the same set of actions to choose from.
Thanks for your reply. I was fully expecting to have to learn and implement some things, such as the zones, triggers, events, etc. I do have some minor experience with more basic game engines, and know the AI and such has to be built and wired up. To me, that’s the fun part… wiring up these types of events/triggers and then triggering them in the right order at the right time in order to “get the shot” so to speak. It’s a more entertaining way of making movies other than just slogging through a timeline. I’m a software developer by trade, and I’m hoping that developmental background provides a unique approach to movie making…
