[Feature Request] Sequencer (Matinee substitute)

[brunogbrito]

Hello Epic folks

I came to UE4 from 2d/3d motion graphics and video production field. It's being great so far, we upgraded our workflow pipeline and removed ''rendering'' steps from it
As I work with timelines and keyframes all day long, I would like to share some comments and ideas for the sequencer development. Some of them must seem obvious, others not viable or maybe its planned already, but costs nothing to reinforce



Personally i loved the UI so far, remembers a lot Adobe Premiere and AE (which is a good thing) and seems to be much easier to do thing than Matinee.

Requests:


Those were references i took from After Effects.



Possibility to create keyframes interpolations (its a must have feature )


-Possibility to animate simple objects or imported meshes without bones (Position, Anchor Point or Pivot, Scale, Rotation, Opacity)
-Possibility to add multiple audio layers instead working in a single master audio.
-Possibility to group objects in the timeline
-Possibility to create multiples sequences inside one single Sequencer
-Export Movie directly from Sequencer without having tweaking blueprints
-Export separe passes (Diffuse, Light, Shadow, Reflections.. This would be a realized dream if possible)
-Turn layers on and off


Possibility to add expressions to parameters (Camera shake, noises... idk if this is possible already)

Questions:

Will be possible to keyframes materials inside sequencer?


Well, those are some ideas that i think will facilitate the general workflow inside sequencer.
Great work for you folks, i hope to be part of your team someday

Best Regards.

[Shadowriver]

I add some requests from me

-Ability to sequence any variable, for example flagged with some specifier in UPROPERTY() or at least exposed to blueprint. 1st option would be more suitable imo as things like that would need a code on Tick() to update the state
-Also ability to call functions (blueprint exposed ofcorse) in sequencer would be cool too (kind of like you can execute logic on sequencer in LittleBigPlanet, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gKKOvxBW5E#t=151), so for example you can spawn something in sequence. And you could use variable states (pointers) as argument?

[KITATUS]

+1 Some Excellent Suggestions!

[Matt]

Pretty much all of these requests are planned for sequencer. Some of them are already possible with matinee as well.

[Jacky]

-Possibility to animate simple objects or imported meshes without bones (Position, Anchor Point or Pivot, Scale, Rotation, Opacity)
-Possibility to add multiple audio layers instead working in a single master audio.
-Possibility to group objects in the timeline
-Export Movie directly from Sequencer without having tweaking blueprints

These are already possible with Matinee. And there is Camera Shake BP and function which you can execute via level BP using an event track in Matinee.

[brunogbrito]

Hi Jacky,

Are you sure you can animate objects without bones (skeletal mesh)? (I mean, keyframe animation). If yes, could u send me some related content link please? I've been looking for this in a while already.

[brunogbrito]

Pretty much all of these requests are planned for sequencer. Some of them are already possible with matinee as well.

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the reply, I hope i helped in something
Glad to know that most things are planned already.

[Jacky]

Hi Jacky,

Are you sure you can animate objects without bones (skeletal mesh)? (I mean, keyframe animation). If yes, could u send me some related content link please? I've been looking for this in a while already.

When you create a group for an object in Matinee you get a Movement Track(if you dont, right click on the group you created and add a Movement track). It stores all the location and rotation info so you can, for instance, pick a cube and make it move along a path while rolling, or animate a door opening/closing. You can search Youtube for Matinee tutorials, this has been possible since UDK really.

[The_Distiller]

I hope that by the time sequencer gets released we'll finally be able to import FBX cameras natively from Maya without messed up translation and rotation values.

[brunogbrito]

When you create a group for an object in Matinee you get a Movement Track(if you dont, right click on the group you created and add a Movement track). It stores all the location and rotation info so you can, for instance, pick a cube and make it move along a path while rolling, or animate a door opening/closing. You can search Youtube for Matinee tutorials, this has been possible since UDK really.

Thanks for that info Jacky

[TheJamsh]

Animating blueprint & material parameters in realtime when you fast-forward and fast-reverse through a sequence would be great too, I imagine that's planned already. The current limitations of matinee + blueprint integration can be limiting in some cases, or slow down development.

[Weskey]

Liked all the suggestions. +1.
I know the Matinee, own several of these options natively, and I think the challenge now was to make them more user friendly and easy to configure the user.


This mockup that Epic did Sequencer is great, this new interface is very nice, with the main functions within easy reach, perfect.




One suggestion would be greater control to use subtitles, as well as allowing insert an easier way subtitles in multi-languages.

[TheJamsh]

Oh and exporting audio is a must too.

[brunogbrito]

Liked all the suggestions. +1.
I know the Matinee, own several of these options natively, and I think the challenge now was to make them more user friendly and easy to configure the user.

One suggestion would be greater control to use subtitles, as well as allowing insert an easier way subtitles in multi-languages.

+1, great spotlights Wesley!

[brunogbrito]

So, I'm starting to not making animations on 3ds max anymore and building them inside UE4 instead. I got some issues when scaling and rotating objects but I fixed it, using bluprints + events (rotation keyframes dont accept values above 360 degress, it goes back to 0).

But one thing that I really would like to request is a drag and drop for the keyframes over the timeline, instead of right clicking it and "set time". Re-arrange keyframes will be a lot easier this way