Using UE4 to pre-render animation

Hello, Is there an option in UE4 to pre-render scene with animation to something like movie clip (.avi)? Not in real time! Let’s say I want to make very high detailed scene animation that my PC can’t handle it in real time, so there is a way to render whole animation in UE4 just like in other 3d apps like maya or 3ds max, so that whole animation could run smooth even on very detailed scene?

Yes, you can record to an image sequence using Matinee:Matinee User Guide | Unreal Engine Documentation

thank you for the answer, UE4 seem to be so powerful in many aspects, even in rendering image sequences :slight_smile:

Thank you for the information! I was able to make some image sequences, not in real time, but the quality was worse than the ingame one. What should I do?

What do you mean by worse? Can you post a screenshot?

So, this one is from the editor window:

And this is from the “pre-rendered” image sequence: 8ae409bf7fe398dee282f6e6a325cfddfc357f3c.jpeg

It is the same frame, still the editor version looks … way better. I’m just started using Unreal Engine, read what I found in Questions and Forums, Tutorials from several places… Everything set to Epic, built production light, etc… Still don’t know, what causing this. Any ideas?

In Matinee on the window where you choose the framerate/resolution/file type for the video there’s a checkbox that will disable texture streaming, what this means is that usually it will load lower-resolution textures and pop them in to higher when needed, but for videos you don’t care much about performance so you can disable that.

I’m saying it since the beginning, I can’t be the only one. High res screen shot and matinee export give worse results than a print screen and recording with an external software/shadowplay (with screen percentage up). I’d like to know why! Aliasing is a problem but it’s more than that. I’m 95% sure post process is not working right with matinee export and HRS.

Even for the Vineyard arch-viz challenge, some teams had problems with ugly matinee output and had to figure out another way to record their video in-time for the deadline.

Texture streaming is disabled already… So is this a Bug? heartlessphil experiencing the same problem, if I understand it well…

I’m actually on the opposite side of heartlessphil, I need to use Matinee because Shadowplay is broken for me, Matinee frame-by-frame gives me things like - YouTube :slight_smile:

Lord willing I’ll have a VXGI version of (ironically) the “Matinee Demo” recorded through Matinee in several hours and mux audio and post tomorrow.

At the end of the day 's methods work, I believe Matinee works too, all depending on your setup and preference. Matinee is problematic admittedly for things like Showdown VR since that can’t really be recorded AFAIK from Matinee.

In some cases Shadowplay would certainly be much more convenient especially recording audio.

OK @VargaPD… For Matinee, sometimes even if texture streaming is enabled or disabled you can have issues. Try enabling texture streaming and also try disabling texture streaming and see how you go. Besides in the Matinee setting there is a “Texture Streaming” option in Project Settings I believe. Try enabling and also disabling that. I believe the Matinee setting overrides that setting but I’m not convinced at this stage.

Primarily, if you have textures not loading try the r.Streaming.PoolSize = 1500 or more for it to use more GPU VRAM. On 2GB cards setting that to 1500 usually helps with the delay in textures coming in. On 3GB cards or more of course increase the setting.

IIRC for the Infiltrator Demo Matinee capture I allowed texture streaming but set the poolsize as above and was able to get full textures from the start. Experiment a little and it should be alright.

For large scenes the poolsize definitely helps textures go in very fast, more or less instantaneous.

If you still have texture delays, in Matinee, set the animations you want to capture start only after several seconds to allow time for textures to load.

Next technique is using the output from Matinee is to set in the Post Process Volume of the scene AntiAliasing to TXAA, and set Screen Percentage to 150% or 200% (a kind of SuperSampling AA). You’ll notice a nice increase in quality.

Finally from Matinee output at 1080p, 2K, 4K, etc. as AVI or frame-by-frame to PNG then use ffmpeg to create video.

I’ve never had an issue with Matinee not rendering the right Post Process Volume settings. Be sure to check the priority of the Post Process Volume when there are multiple PPVs and be sure to check “Unbound”.

In these ways I believe Matinee can be useful.

Otherwise of course Shadowplay can be very convenient. My GPU just isn’t powerful enough for realtime recording and Shadowplay as mentioned doesn’t work on my setup.

Cheers and good luck.

Erm … I understand the half what you wrote, and now, I have several errors:
Error Accessed None ‘CallFunc_Array_Get_Item’ from node Set OrthoWidth in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn
Error Accessed None ‘CallFunc_Array_Get_Item’ from node SetWorldLocation in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn
Error Accessed None from node SetWorldLocation in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn
Error Accessed None ‘CallFunc_Array_Get_Item’ from node SetWorldRotation in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn
Error Accessed None from node SetWorldRotation in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn
Error Accessed None ‘CallFunc_Array_Get_Item’ from node Branch in graph ‘EventGraph’ in blueprint RenderToTexture_Pawn

I think, I killed my project T_T

Edit: Sorry, Game mode was set to RenderToTexture_Pawn, and I don’t know, how this happened… I set back to GameMode mode, and now it is working.

Cool, glad to know you found the issue. Don’t worry, the suggestions I made above including r.Streaming.PoolSize shouldn’t kill your project. BE SURE TO BACKUP YOUR FILES THOUGH!