Compositing UE4

Development Character & Animation
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1

It’s official!

I’ve used UE4 to replace my render engine! I just completed my first job with it and my client couldn’t tell the difference- they were just blown away by how quickly I got it out and “rendered” changes!

That said, I’ve got a few things I can’t figure out. I think one is doable, but coming from an offline rendering background, I’m not sure how to do it. The others might just be “wishlist” items. Either way, very happy with UE4!

Here’s my list:

  1. Is there some way to make a “matte/shadow” material? Something that will catch shadows/reflections but only show those? The idea being that I then composite the UE4 sequence over something else in Nuke or AE.

  2. Can import geometry with animated vertices? (Like an alembic or vertex animated fbx files?)

  3. Can I import animated maps/sequences? I’m familiar with having a series of images in a single sheet and then telling UE that it’s a grid and to cycle through… but for what I do that would create a HUGE file! Being able to import an AVI, MP4, or something like that would be great!

2

Hey The3DStig -

1 - I might be misinterpreting what you are asking here, but you should be able to render out from just one of the buffer visualizations to get what you are looking for, so Lighting Only or Reflections. You would need to setup a console command on Event Begin Play in the Level Blueprint to switch to that Visualization mode. You can find those commands on this page, https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/UI/LevelEditor/Viewports/ViewModes/index.html

2 - In a limited fashion, you can use the Morph Target workflow and bring in an animated morph target. You can find the documentation on the workflow here, Static Mesh Morph Targets in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine Documentation and there is also some content examples for these as well in the Content Examples Marketplace item (free item).

3 - Absolutely, I use these consonantly. These files have the same power of 2 base stipulations as all textures used in the engine. So, for example, a 1024 x 1024 could have a 4 frame animation with each frame at 512 x 512 or a 256 frame animation with each frame at 64 x 64, or variations like a 32 frame animation with each frame at 128 x 512. As far as importing mp4 it is currently in development and high on the priority list for our developers, so SOON.

Hopefully that was helpful -

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

3

Is .mp4 import supported yet in UE4? If not, what formats would you suggest using to get the most optimal performance?

4

Hi JordanHarveyVFX -

You can import mp4 and wmv assuming that you are not using the H264 codec which still has many issues.

Thank You

Eric Ketchum

5

can I load jpeg sequence as a video?

6

…so you really solved your problem with the camera-orbiting long ago?

i really can’t figure out how to use UE for a real project (arch/ product) because you can definatley tell the difference if it is rendered (for e.g. with vray) or if the image is visually approximated by a free software… as you can see: matte/shadow or GBuffer and and and - remember this is a game engine for video games, not a high end render and modeling software like 3dsmax/ vray…