Hi, I am making cinematics in Sequencer, nothing related to videogames, just a short film of about 60 shots.
I am wondering which is the best way to add my assets into the Sequencer for this purpose. Currently I am just dragging them from the Content Browser into the Sequencer and then add the animation to the Skeletal meshes, etc, it all looks good. However I can’t do this with particle emitters. What I am doing then is to add them into the level, and then drag them into the Sequencer. The problem is that once I add them into the level, they appear in every shot and I don’t want that. I can hide them in the Level sequence with the Toggle option, but to do that with all other shots? How is the best way to get my particle to show only in the Level Sequencs I have? Another thing is… I have a fire emitter in the Level, but in the Sequencer I would like to have 3 fireballs, so I should put 3 emitters in the level (duplicates) or I can use the same fire emitter and duplicate that inside Sequencer? I have tried to do that but once I add the same emitter actor the previous one disappears, allowing me to show only one.
Sorry for the long post, ideally, I just want to know if I am doing it right. Is it ok to drag my content from Content Browser into the Sequencer? Or should all my characters/animated stuff should be as Actors in my Level and just then put them in Sequencer? Thanks!
There’s a few ways to achieve what you want. In general though, I would suggest creating sequencer spawnables for any asset that you want to appear in a certain shot only. For assets that appear in most/all shots, it’s probably best to use possessables. You could go even further by creating a level sequence that contains certain spawnables and the including that level sequence for shots that need that collection of spawnable assets. By the way, possessables are created by dragging actors from the world outliner into Sequencer, or using the Add button. Spawnables are created by dragging assets from the content browser. You can also convert possessables to spawnables and vice versa. For more details on possessables vs spawnables, see this: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Sequencer/Overview/#possessablesvsstopspawnables
Hi Max.Chen, thanks for the tips. However, I have tried both ways to insert particles in the Sequencer but both have failed. When I bring the particle into the Sequencer as Spawnable, nothing happens when I hit the play button or scroll the timeline bar. I have tried adding the Particle Toogle Track and setting it to Activate and adding ParticleSystemComponent>Autoactivate but both ways show me just an inactive emitter. If I bring it as Possesable it will play perfectly, the problem to have it as Possessable is that it will keep playing in previous and following Level sequences (I use a “main” Level Sequence and inside it I am adding all 60 shots, each shot in one Level Sequence), and I have yet not found a way to just hide it. I tried to animate the Activate/Deactivate Toogle track and even animating its location to go down below the ground to hide it somehow before and after the Level Sequence range, but it will always snap back to the initial location and hence continue playing during all 60 shots. Is there a workflow about this that I am missing? If it is not much of a trouble for you, can you guide me through the specific process of adding a particle emitter into a Level sequence so that it plays only in that Level sequence and not in the previous/following ones? Or at least if it is possible to create a Level blueprint to specify that I want the particle to play only during specific Level Sequences and how? I will appreciate a lot your answer, thanks for your time!
ps. by the way, the links and tips you shared above are really helpful for having a cleaner workflow, thanks for that, now it is just the particles which are giving me trouble.
1- drag into current level
2- in details ‘un-check auto-activate’ in activation
then in the current level blueprint
1- ‘add custom event’ and name it
2- get ‘set active’ function in components
3- drag in your particle (from world outliner in editor) and plug it into target and ‘check active’
4- duplicate and make a custom event the same except ‘un-check active’
now you can fire off or hide the custom event to to your hearts content
