Where is the render button in UE4?

anonymous_user_7c1ec868 · September 19, 2015, 9:31am

For those who have used Maya, as you know, if one wants to render an animated scene, this can be done via opening the render settings window and tweaking the render settings and choosing to either render to a video file or batch render all the frames into a series of image files.

The questions now are:

Is there a render settings button in UE4 to open a render settings window?
Can UE4 render the animation as batch images and/or video just like Maya?
What is the procedure to render an animated scene in UE4?

Can you reply with some screenshots showing the buttons and workflow to render an animation scene please?

anonymous_user_923c79df · September 19, 2015, 9:44am

In matinee you will have to click on the movie button -> then you can choose the framerate, video type, image type,…

anonymous_user_7c1ec868 · September 19, 2015, 9:56am

Thanks! That simple? After selecting the settings, what button do I need to press to start processing of the render?

anonymous_user_923c79df · September 19, 2015, 9:59am

Just click the ok button and it will start rendering the video -> it will be saved in your project folder

anonymous_user_7c1ec868 · September 19, 2015, 10:11am

Thanks again for your rapid reply!

Rather than starting a new thread, can someone advise what is the best output method for an animated scene in UE4? Video or image sequence? Will the image sequence look better and have better quality than a video output? [i.e. after the image sequence is combined to make a video file].

anonymous_user_923c79df · September 19, 2015, 10:23am

With images you have a better control over your video (e.g you can edit the single frames) + in my opinion a better quality and less laggs -> it only takes more time to create your video with images

anonymous_user_2b10dd13 · September 21, 2015, 2:48pm

Under Settings > Engine Scalability ensure that it is set to “Epic” and UNCHECK the “monitor framerate” or something like that.

As for “Render Settings” I found two key areas. Once is Lightmass under the World Settings tab. The other is a Post Process Volume. Lightmass is akin to non-realtime render packages eg. light bounces, light bounce quality, ambient occlusion, etc. Post Process Volume is akin to the “camera” setting on non-realtime render packages… Here you set the depth of field, bloom, antialiasing, etc.

Of course keep in mind as this is a realtime game engine many other factors affect “render quality” at any one time such as type of lighting, shaders, materials, global illumination, particles, light shafts, etc.

BTW I’m big fan of certain tweaks such as setting the Screen Percentage to 150% or 200% in the Post Process Volume (a kind of brute force supersample antialiasing) as well as editing the Screen Space Reflection shader: ://oliverm-h.blogspot.my/2014/08/ue4-improving-ssr.html

I’m no expert, just switching over from learning Unity

Indeed as per above, using Matinee, export as PNG frames at say 4K resolution. Then use FFMpeg to encode that into a 4K or 2K or 1080p etc. mp4 file. FFMpeg creates some very good quality videos eg. using the settings at: ://superuser/questions/533695/how-can-i-convert-a-series-of-png-images-to-a-video-for-youtube