How to create a movie in unreal engine 5 beginners edition

Sequencer Basics

Get started making cinematics and animations with Sequencer in Unreal Engine.

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This page provides a beginner’s overview of the Sequencer tool and how to create Cinematics for anyone who is starting to learn about Cinematics and Unreal Engine.

Prerequisites

You have a Level open in Unreal Engine’s Level Editor.

What is Sequencer?

Sequencer is Unreal Engine’s cinematic toolset which allows for the direct manipulation of Actors, cameras, properties, and other assets over time.

This workflow is achieved by providing a non-linear editing environment in which tracks and keyframes are created and modified along a timeline.

Sequencer requires the creation of Level Sequence assets to be referenced while editing. These are created and saved in the Content Browser.

How Do I Create and Open a Sequence?

The easiest way to create a new Sequence asset is to click the Cinematics dropdown in the Level Editor’s main toolbar and select Add Level Sequence.

This will prompt you to create a new Level Sequence asset. Give it a name and click Save.

Once the Level Sequence is created, the Sequencer Editor will open and display the contents of your newly created Level Sequence.

How Do I Create Content with Sequencer?

The following beginner’s guides will assist you in learning common actions performed while using Sequencer.

Media Framework Quick Start

A guide on how to quickly add and play videos inside your game levels with the Media Framework tools.

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At the end of this guide, you will have a TV playing content in your level that you can turn on or off when standing next to them and pressing a key.

Goals

In the Media Framework Quick Start guide, we walk through setting up a television (TV) that can play videos inside your level. We also set the TV up with Blueprints so the content on the TV can be turned on with the press of a button. We also expose the Media Framework variables so that we can quicly change the content that is played on the TV through the Details panel. If you are new to the Media Framework tools, or want to know how to play videos on Static Meshes inside your levels, this guide is for you.

This guide includes some setup using Materials and Blueprints to achieve the effect of a video playing on a TV. Some prior knowledge of these topics is recommended but not required.

Objectives

After going through this tutorial, developers will know the following:

How to import Media and use different Media Sources.

How to create a Material incorporating a Media Texture used to play media files.

How to start and stop playback of media using Blueprint.

How to create a TV Blueprint where you can specify what Media Source to use.

Create a New Project using from the Games category using the ThirdPerson Blueprint template and give it any name.

Extract this Sample Content to your machine, then import all content into the Engine.

Optionally, you can create a new folder to hold all the sample content. A Material will automatically be created based on the Texture asset.

In the M_TV_Inst Material, delete the Vector Parameter node, and add a Texture Sample with the Sample Type set to External.

Add a Texture Object Parameter and name it TV_Texture, then connect to the Texture Sample through the Tex pin.

For the TV_Texture Param Tex Object, change the Texture to a new Media Texture and call it MediaPlayer_01_Video.

Click image for full view.

Click the magnifying glass icon to browse to and open the MediaPlayer_01_Video asset.

If you are using a Texture Sample or Texture Object with the Electra Media Player, set the Sampler Type to Color.

Click the Media Player drop-down menu and create a Media Player asset called MyMediaPlayer.

When the Create Media Player pop-up menu appears, just click Ok as we do not need to create another Media Texture as we did this in Step 5 above.

Open your MyMediaPlayer asset, then double-click the Gideon_1080p_H264 file and the video will start playing.

Click image for full view.

In the M_TV_Inst Material, add a TexCoord with VTiling set to 2.0 and connected to the UVs pin of the Texture Sample.

Add another TextureSample with the Texture set to the T_TV_M2 asset.

Add a LinearInterpolate node with the Texture from the previous step connect to the Alpha through the Green channel.

Connect the remaining pins as shown below.

Click image for full view.

Section Result

We’ve set up the Material that will play back our Media using a Media Player and associated Media Texture asset. If we open the TV mesh in the Content Browser, you may notice that the screen appears black (or white in some instances).

To preivew, you can open the Media Player asset and double-click the Media Source, at which point, the media will play on the Static Mesh TV in the Viewport.

Click image for full view.

In this step, we create a Blueprint that uses the TV Static Mesh and the remaining components needed make our TV work in the Level.

In the Content Browser click the Add New button and select Blueprint Class.

In the Pick Parent Class menu, select Actor and name the Blueprint TV_BP.

In the TV_BP asset, click the Add Component button and select Static Mesh.

In the Details panel for the Static Mesh, assign the SM_TV as the Static Mesh to use.

Add a Box Collision component, then resize and move the box infront of the TV as shown below.

Click image for full view.

We are going to use the Box Collision to indicate when the player is infront of the TV and can turn it on (we don’t want to be able to turn on the TV while standing behind it).

Add a MediaSound component and assign the MyMediaPlayer asset in the Details panel for the Media Player property.

This will be used to play back the audio associated with the defined Media Source inside the Media Player.

In the Details panel for the Box Collision, add both the On Component Begin Overlap and On Component End Overlap events.

Section Result

Our TV Blueprint is set up, next we will add the scripted functionality to be able to turn the TV on when standing next to it by pressing a key.

In this final step, we add the scripted functionality that enables the player to press a button to turn the TV on or off.

On the Event Graph of the TV Blueprint, use a Get Player Controller, Enable Input and Disable input connected as shown below.

Click image for full view.

Right-click in the graph and add a P Keyboard Event (or your desired key press) and connect Pressed to a FlipFlop node.

Right-click in the graph and disable Context Sensitive, then add an Open Source node.

On the Open Source node, right-click the Target pin and select Promote to Variable and call it MediaPlayerforVideo.

By default, Media Players are set to Play on Open which will play the media whenever it is opened.

For Media Players that have Play on Open disabled, you can use a Play node followed by an Open Source call.

Promote Media Source to a variable and call it SourceToOpen.

In the Variables list, click the eye icon on both variables to make them Instance Editable and connect as shown below.

Add a Close node connected to the B pin of the FlipFlop and Target set to MediaPlayerforVideo.

Drag the TV_BP into the Level, then in the Details panel, assign the MyMediaPlayer and Gideon_1080p_H264 assets.

We are going to use the Box Collision to indicate when the player is infront of the TV and can turn it on (we don’t want to be able to turn on the TV while standing behind it).

Inside the MyMediaPlayer asset, enable the Loop option.

This will automatically loop the video once it starts playing unless instructed to close.

Click the Play button to play in the Level.

End Result

When playing in the Level and approaching the TV, pressing the P button will start playing the assigned media. Pressing P again will stop playback.

Here are some additional things to try with your project using the Media Framework tools:

Enable the player to control playback of the TV.

Use a Media Playlist as a Media Source and allow the player to «change the channels» for the TV.

Add a second TV Blueprint to the level with its own Media Player, Media Sound, and Media Source Assets.

How to learn Unreal Engine 5 – Ultimate beginner tutorial

Welcome to the ultimate tutorial on the Unreal Engine for Beginners, in this article we will go over how to make a game in Unreal 5, the basics of the IDE (integrated development environment), the free templates that are available out of the box to utilize for a beginner with no money, and then we will create a new character in Daz3D, import him into the game, and I will teach you how to remap his skeleton to the new character.

The point at which that character is running around in the world ready for combat, is when the tutorial ends.

Read this article on how to make a story based game. From Baskin, with love.

Can a beginner learn Unreal engine?

Yes, it is very simple for a beginner to download the Unreal Engine and make a game with it with no previous experience. Simply download the Unreal Engine, and start experimenting, it’s like a game, just even better than playing any other videogame. You can make a game without coding much, or use blueprint to make things even easier, or an expert can code in C++.

How do I start Unreal Engine 5?

How hard is it to learn Unreal Engine 5?

Learning Unreal Engine 5 is easy, just download the free program, experiment with blueprint, start adding and creating characters, use the templates, buy resources from the asset store, learn behavior trees, learn animation and skeletal rigging, learn lighting, eventually you’ll get around to everything. Don’t be intimidated, it’s easy to earn money with Unreal.

Which license should I get?

Get this one, the other license is for free to play games, and internal projects and things like that, it implies you will never monatize or sell your work. Unless you are earning a million dollars, Publisher Edition or Issued License is free, if your game earns over a million dollars, you pay a five percent cut.

Considering what you’re getting, a steal would be too ungenerous. This is the greatest game engine on the market, more fun than anything else you could buy or play, and it’s not just free, when you get good at it, it MAKES YOU MONEY.

Think about how fun it is to play Persona 4 Golden, then imagine there was a game that was even better than that, and playing it gives you money, and it’s not World of Warcraft.

Next up, Install and Open Unreal Engine 5

I’m not going to get into the details of how to install it. Watch these tutorials, so starting out, what’s the first thing we’ll do when starting it up?

Launching the Engine

Ok, click launch and choose “New Project” and this is what you will see:

Here are a list of templates for your Unreal Game. You can buy more complex stuff, but this will give you an idea of what the Engine is capable of. You could choose a blank empty project, but let’s choose “top down” for the heck of it.

But there’s also:

Choose a location for the project files, and name your project. Then click “CREATE”. This is what you will see:

Ok, Press “Play” as your first action. The Game will play. It is kind of like the foundation for an srpg like Baldur’s Gate or Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin.

That will all come later. Press escape to exit out of the editor.

Let’s go over some of the things we see here:

Content Browser

This is where all your files will be found, they are organized into folders located in your Content folder. You can right click to create new folders, place content in your folders, in a complex heirarchy.

Here you will find all of your characters, blueprints, materials, sounds, songs, scenes, behavior trees and basically any kind of file you might include in your game. Whatever you import into the game, you’ll find it here, think of it as your file explorer for your Unreal project.

If you want to learn game dev from scratch, be sure to check out our subscription service, it’s like Netflix for Game Dev Tutorials. You can learn everything you need to know about game dev here.

World Outliner

Here you will find everything that has been placed in the current level or “scene”. Anything that has a physical presence in the level can be found here, organized into a heirarchy. You can create the heirarchies however you wish, organizing your objects into folders usually based on their function or type.

Details Panel

The details panel on the right will show you information about whatever you have selected in the world outliner, or content browser. All associated functions and properties will be listed here, this is where you will make changes to the objects in question.

Create

This is where you can create anything that can be created within the Unreal Engine 5, this tab will add it to the current level. Start by creating a sphere. Choose “Create” “Shapes” “Sphere”. This is what you will see:

Note that in the World Outliner, a Sphere Object has been created, in the Details Panel, there are a number of properties, let’s look through them.

Transform

This is too much to go over in one lesson, but let’s start with a few of them. Let’s start with the Transform. The transform has location, rotation, and scale, on an X Y and Z Axis. Location can be static, stationary or moveable.

You’ll start to get a feel for which direction is X, left and right, which direction is Y, up and down, and which direction is Z, forward and backward.

You’ll also get a feeling for how rotations will affect your object, maybe a cube would have been better.

Let’s scale that sphere, I’ll set x to 10 y to 7 and z to 10, this is the result:

A massive egg, embedded halfway in the ground. You can move it around, you can rotate it.

Static Mesh

The egg is not a sphere per-se, it is a Static Mesh, a shape, that can be transformed(moved), rotated, and scaled. It could just as easily be something else…. Choose a different static mesh and see how it changes. Look it’s this now:

Note the distortion remains….. We can distort it even further, for instance, this is what happens when you set Y to 40:

By the way you can move the camera with WSAD like a videogame, you can rotate the camera by holding down right click while moving the mouse, and in the top right, you have options to make the camera move faster or slower depending the level of fine detail you need in your movements, you can also control momentum and acceleration.

There are also Skeletal Meshes, for animated moving characters like humans and animals.

Materials

Materials are the skin of the static mesh, for instance, this is what happens when I replace the two materials with twisty leaves texture and shiny gold texture:

Physics

Here you can choose “Simulate Physics”, to apply physics to your object, so it will fall, or collide with other objects, you can apply acceleration, momentum, force. The behavior exhibited is determined by the physics properties you assign your object.

In this way we can have a character sliding across and icey floor, conversely, walking on something with so much friction, you can barely move.

With physics, comes ballistics, force application, acceleration, momentum, basically everything you need for a car game. Experiment with it, it is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

Collision

Collision contains everything you need to know about whether an object will collide with another object, what it will pass through, what it will collide with, if passing through, does it generate overlap events, triggers employed when two objects pass through each other.

Anyway, there is too much to cover in one tutorial but you will learn it all eventually.

Blueprint

Open the top down character blueprint class from the blueprint menu, and have a look at what you see:

Here we are in the event graph. A blueprint is like a complex object made up of lots of different parts. In the event graph, you see a bunch of nodes, connected by wires. Each node is a function, the wires indicate which direction the flow of execution is running in. Here is an example:

Getting Started with Blueprint

Here we have some basic elementary nodes, “Event Begin Play” and “Event Tick”. Event Begin Play regards the functions activated when the blueprint is first spawned into the level. Event Tick takes place roughly every frame or so.

In both cases they are using a “Branch” node to select true or false, from a condition plugged into it, which is “Is head mounted display enabled”. If it is, then it runs the “true” wire to it’s next function, if it is not, it runs the “false” wire to it’s next function. Very complex sets of behavior can be programed into the truth or falsity of a condition. You can also have sequence nodes that go through multiple levels of conditions.

Basically every function you need to use in Unreal is available in blueprint form. You can and may, never use C++ at any point in your Unreal Experience, and you can make a fully featured game, with no knowledge of programming, entirely within blueprint, it’s not just possible, I would RECOMMEND IT.

It will take a long time to learn all the important blueprint functions, but you can get the hang of it in a few months without much difficulty, even if you don’t spend too much time on it.

Here is the viewport:

The Skeletal Mesh

Here you will find, everything that makes up your third person character, on the left you will see his Skeletal Mesh, which is changeable, character movement component, components can be added with the ADD button. There is also a capsule collider, to collide with other objects.

On the right you will see everything associated with your selected object. So it is telling me about the base character object right now, if you clicked on the mesh, you could change the mesh, and change the animation blueprint, which controls how the character animates. These can be retargeted to different skeletons, or different meshes for the same skeleton and blueprint.

You can have lots of different characters who all share the same skeleton, then you don’t have to change the animation blueprint, you just change the character mesh, otherwise you must do both.

There is also the construction script where the object deals with pre-spawning behavior.

Making a New Character

Ok, opening up Daz Studio.

Daz Studio is the studio you will use to create your characters on an indie budget with AAA Results. There are other character creators which might be better, but not on a …. let’s call it on a budget.

So the first thing I’ll do is go to the figures tab and choose genesis 8 essentials. You will need to purchase a variety of interactive licenses to utilize this, but I think Genesis 8 Starter Essentials should give you everything you need to make your first character, without running afoul of copyright. You are responsible for acquiring all licenses before bringing your characters into a commercial game for sale or even available to view in pictures or videos, unless it is a still or animated render created directly in Daz Studio.

Let’s create a character, put some clothes on him, and see what we’ve got.

Exporting our character

Ok, so here’s our character, the first thing I’m going to do is fit all of the clothes and hair to our new character, by rightclicking in the top right window, choosing “fit to”, and selecting the genesis 8 male, for each individual item.

Then we will export our character with “file” “export”. If this was Unreal Engine 4 we would just use the Daz to Unreal Plugin, but in situations where that is not possible, SmartPoly’s joint renamer is a very useful tool.

It renames the bones and joints in the newly created skeleton, so that it is compatible with the Unreal Engine 4’s humanoid skeletal animation system. The Daz to Unreal Plugin solves this and much else for you, but we will have to wait until the full release of Unreal 5 in 2022 to utilize this easy method.

The Export Window

Pick a name for your FBX character, I recommend the original name of the figure as well as any associated clothing items, so you can handle licenses more efficiently. Press “Save”.

You must purchase a license for each character, item of clothing, or bundle of items you wish to put into your game.

This is what you will see:

Export Options

Staging will tell you what assets you will be bringing with you in export. And you can now click “Accept”.

We can close Daz now.

Now take your exported FBX and rename the joints

Copy your Gen8m and images folder to the debug folder of your joint renamer. Right click and edit the “rig” file. Put the name of your new FBX in the name area. No spaces or it won’t work.

Run the rig file. It will open up a window showing it renaming the joints, which should pretty quickly close, leaving behind and output file and an fbm folder.

Put in a safe location, and import into Unreal. By rightclicking on the content browser and choosing import to the selected folder, choose your fbx, this is what you will see:

Your standard settings are probably fine.

Import all.

This is what you see:

Let it load, and then open the character’s skeleton. Compiling shaders takes a while, just let it work, don’t interrupt it. This is what you will see:

Retargeting

Go to the retarget manager. Select Rig “Humanoid”, and automap bones. Fix Spine 1 2 and 3. Fix Thigh L and R. Anything that doesn’t match up. Remove Calf twist L and R. Save your bonemapping. Select use current pose to be sure.

Then Move onto the skeleton tree

In settings choose show retargeting options, and it will look like this:

Click the Genesis8Male and choose “recursively set translation retargeting skeleton”. Set Genesis 8 male to Animation, set Pelvis to Animation scaled, and set Spine 1 to Animation Scaled.

Save your skeleton, save all, go to the preview scene settings panel on the top right, and choose “apply to asset”, in the mesh tab.

Find the Unreal Mannequin’s Skeleton and do the same to it, should be as easy as selecting humanoid rig and automapping, the bones are all the right names.

We are now ready to retarget our animations

Go to the Unreal Mannequin folder, and find the “Third Person Anim_BP”:

Right click on it, and select “Retarget anim blueprints” and then “Duplicate anim blueprints and retarget”. Select your newly created Gen8skeleton. It should be in roughly the same position. You can put a prefix and a suffix, I like GEN8_as a prefix. Click “Retarget”.

You can also just retarget the unreal skeleton to fit to the new skeleton if you want.

This is what you will see:
Here is your newly created animation blueprint and associated animations.

Put them somewhere safe. Go to “content” “topdownBP” “blueprints” Top Down Character Blueprint. Go to the viewport. This is what you will see:

Select the Mesh, on the left.

On the right, change the mesh to your new character mesh, change the animation blueprint to your new anim_bp. Compile, Save and close.

Press Play

And with that, we’ve reached the end of our first tutorial. There’s our little guy running around the level, having a blast, and as you can see, he animates normally, and as expected. You can use this technique to rig just about any humanoid skeleton, and you can use this technique to rig ANYTHING humanoid from Daz.

Conclusion

You have now reached the end of our tutorial. I hope this was illuminating, it certain was for me to write, I hope it was fun for you to read as well.

I hope you learned a lot, and I hope you’re well on your way to getting started on your journey towards mastering Unreal. I hope in our next tutorial I can show you how to make something with third party assets. Have a great day, friend!

Apply Animation to a Character

A beginner’s guide at how to add character animation in Sequencer.

Choose your operating system:

This page provides a beginner’s overview of applying animations to characters in Sequencer and is intended for those who are new to Cinematics and Unreal Engine.

Prerequisites

You have read through the Sequencer Basics page and have already created and opened a Level Sequence in your Level.

You have created a project using the Third Person Template template, which gives you access to a sample Skeletal Mesh and animations.

Adding a Character to Sequencer

Start by adding a character to your Level. Do this from the Content Browser by navigating to your Skeletal Mesh asset and dragging it into your Level.

Next, with your sequence open and the character selected, click the + Track button and select Actor to Sequencer > Add ‘SK_Mannequin’. This will add a track referencing the character into your sequence.

When the Skeletal Mesh track is added to the sequence, it will automatically be populated with common tracks for this Actor. In this example, an Animation track for the Skeletal Mesh character was automatically created.

Applying Animation to a Character

Click the + Animation button on the Animation track. This will list all available animations that are compatible with your character’s skeleton. Select one of these animations to add it to your sequence.

Once the animation is added, click play to preview the sequence. If the animation is intended to continue past the current endpoint, you can drag the edge of the clip to extend it.

Rendering Out Cinematic Movies

Shows you can render out your cinematic sequences to a saved movie file on your computer.

Choose your operating system:

As of Unreal Engine 5.0, Renderer Movie is deprecated. Instead, please use Movie Render Queue .

Once you have created your cinematic (or even during your production process as part of daily reviews), you may want to render it out as a movie file that you can share with others. The Render Movie option in Sequencer enables you to share your movie with others as an AVIВ file that will play with most media players.В

In addition to rendering as a movie file, you can render your cinematic as an Image Sequence or render out Custom Render Passes that you can use in an external application to finalize your scene. Selecting the Render Movie button will display the Render Movie Settings window, which you can use to define how your scene will be rendered.В

In the following example, weВ render out a sample sceneВ andВ presentВ some of the options available as part of the rendering process.

Steps

For this guide, we are using the Blueprint Third Person Template with Starter Content enabled.

Inside your project, from the Main Toolbar, click the Cinematics button then select Add Level Sequence.

In the Save Asset As window, enter a name for your Sequence, then click Save.

Inside the Sequencer Editor, click the Add Camera button.

In the Viewport, position the camera anywhere in the Level facing the Character, then press the S key to add a keyframe.

We will shoot a sample scene where the camera pushes in on our the Character in the Level for a close-up shot.

In SequencerВ move to frame 150, then move the Camera in the Level to a new location and press the S key to add a key. The camera will now move from our first keyframe to our second keyframe, pushing in on the Character.

In Sequencer, click the Render Movie button.

The Render Movie Settings window will open.

Under the Capture Settings, click the Output Format option to view the options, then select Video Sequence.

Under General, choose an Output Directory to save your cinematic to, then click Capture Movie.

A preview window will appear while the rendering process occurs.

If prompted to Save, click Save or Don’t Save to continue as selecting Cancel will abort the rendering process.

End Result

After the capture process, you will have a video file of your cinematic sequence (below is our rendered-out cinematic).

There are additional options available when rendering out video sequences. One that may be useful during production is the ability to add Burn Ins to your video.В BurnВ ins are overlays that are embedded with your video, generally to provide internal information about the frame being shown.

You can add the default burnВ ins to your video, or custom burnВ ins that you create, by enabling the Use Burn In option.

This can be useful if you are doing reviews of a cinematic, as it will display timecode information as well as shot names and any other custom information you want to provide.