I’ve just entered in a challenge to create something unique for our local library based on the WW2 Occupation of the island of Guernsey. I’m hoping this will be a short-but-sweet educational VR experience based on a bombing event that took place along our seafront in 1940, along with a narration of events by someone who was there over the top.
I’m currently modeling up the area in Ue4 and have some experience doing architectural stuff but as for putting the whole thing together into a complete ‘experience’ like other Ue4 things ive tried on the rift… well… Im not sure where to start really!
Ideally I’d like to have the person stationary so they are just looking around as the narration and events unfold but I will need to ‘fade’ from a scene where this clock tower is looking good to one where it’s destroyed, and in between the fades still have the audio clip running the whole time… I think animating explosions and dynamic stuff is too much for now. Can someone point me in the right direction of the best way to get started doing this? As in … would I create 2 separate levels, a good one and a ‘bombed’ one, and then fade the camera in between them? and if so how would i start setting that up so that you can play the whole level through as an experience that you can repeat over and over again. Sort of like the Ue4 roller coaster, just by hitting a button at the end.
Any help to start with would be great as I imagine this is going to be quite a steep learning curve in ue4!
And just to give you an idea of the project I’ve attached an image so far. The clock in the middle is the first area of interest. Then as the story progresses there’s another area off to the right further down where a bunch of Tomato trucks got bombed. I’m hoping to start with the player near the clock tower until the ‘fade to black’ and sounds of bombing/planes etc - then fade them back into this clock area with it destroyed/smoking/on fire, then fade them over to the other location where all the trucks will be destroyed as well. I think i’ll be ok building up these individual areas with the special effects but don’t really know how to stream the whole experience together…
I’ve been doing a bit of reading the past couple of days and think I now know the right direction to go in, I’m still hoping some people might be able to reply to this thread and let me know few more specifics If i’m on the right track!
It looks to me like matinee is the way forward. I’ve read a few threads where people have used the ‘Rift’ template to move the character along paths etc so I imagine my project of just having the character still and fading him in and out of a few scenes or levels will be a bit easier.
Can anyone tell me if that’s 1: The best way forward? 2: How I’d go about starting to get my rift player cam controlled by matinee so the player can still look around using the rift but be faded in and out of levels. and 3: The general best procedure for then transporting him through the experience? - I’m guessing it would have to be 2 different levels but haven’t used that side of Ue4 yet so have no idea how to go about linking things with Matinee so the player moves though this experience. Having the audio synced up with it all is another thing I’m looking into as well.
I’m getting there! It’s just the deadline is quite soon so was just hoping that instead of spending days and days going in the wrong direction I could just get some pointers on the best method at the outset to plan it a bit.
For example - I’m working with matinee to animate all the ‘good’ buildings out of sight while the ‘destroyed’ ones come in… so not using levels. And then just using a fade to black effect in the post-process volume with the exposure while b. No idea if this is better or worse but seems to be working so far.