Okay, this may be long so please bear with me. I did put down a list of things I need but please read the post if you have time.
I want to use the power and resources of Unreal Engine for a webcomic. I want to just set up the level, walk through it to find the perfect angle, and switch to first-person for the best panel. This includes animating the models but the ability to go frame by frame to look natural. With my current project, http://growlution.net, (not updated recently but I am working on the buffer) I had to add a page and had the pose for the next one in the poses. I had the bright idea to animate the character (Zeep) into the next pose. It looked so natural and I was able to select the right frame that I wondered if I could create my first book as a webcomic in the same way but within UE.
My reason for choosing UE to create Aden’s Reluctant Wizardry (ARW) is this. I can create a level quickly for say the school. Place things exactly the way I want, using my now huge free library and even create the props I need, for I am no slacker in the 3d modeling department. I have thousands of assets, and even a toon shader I can use to make it look hand-drawn.
In blender, I have to literally turn every texture into a toon texture. Although I have my own node, this becomes impractical on the more advanced scenes because as I append each completed model it duplicates Xade_Toon into Xade_Toon.001, Xade_Toon.002, etc, eating up at my resources. Despite having a machine geared towards 3d modeling and gaming it can and has slowed it down when I imported 40 some rocks. With Growlution, I have to constantly clean up the scene after every import. Plus scale and distance is wonky in blender.
UE negates that because the shader is a post-process. I can just turn on the depth mask (or did I set the mask for the real thing? I forget) for the object and go. Quick and easy. To top it all off I can sell exploration levels to my fans and even take it one step further and turn it into a game.
So, things I would need:
- Animations. (duh and easy to do)
- A way to go frame-by-frame and pause at the perfect frame yet also a way to keep moving about for that perfect angle.
- A third-person to first-person mode, available on youtube, I’ve seen it somewhere I just have to find it. I believe it involves switching between camera modes.
- Mouse mode. (again on youtube)
- On the fly pose adjusting. I have no idea how to do this.
- Call up animations on the fly. I’ve seen “games” like this. Mixamo Converter comes to mind.
- Ability to choose what model to animate/change.
- Adjust the poses in case I need to give the pose more personality
So, can anyone point me in the right direction? Maybe videos or advice? I’ve looked but haven’t found many answers. Maybe I’m searching wrong, I don’t know. Anyhow, thanks for reading!