I wonder what’s cinematic workflow at Epic, especially in regards to character and camera movement coordination. Since camera import doesn’t work (sadly), it is now sort of a split workflow (final character animation in Maya, final camera movement/cutting in UE4) that I feel is quite inconvenient.
My current workflow:
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A previs pass for character&prop animation as well as camera movement/cuts. [Maya]
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Import rough character&prop animation, re-create camera movement/cuts in , add a rough lighting pass. [UE4]
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Final animation pass for characters/props and camera work. [Maya]
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Import final characters/props animation and adjust camera movement/cuts/blends accordingly in . [UE4]
Frankly, having ability to import camera directly from Maya/Max one-on-one would be such an enormous time saver that I wonder how you guys can live without it.
This may be relevant - perhaps a bit more of a “10,000ft view”
From Triangle Game Conference 2012
This is actually an old pipeline (Gears 2 and some of Gears 3). If you go a little further in that presentation, I present our more current pipeline.
Here is our current Production Pipeline for Creating Cinematics:
1.) We bring in rough MOCAP data into editor and begin to shoot our scenes using cameras. Characters usually have ‘Pan’ hands, No facial, jitters and some glitches at this point but can easily be worked with to build out a scene none less.
Each shot uses a camera and we view overall piece through director track. We edit scene by adjusting cameras, animations, and miscellaneous items in timeline. We also create our edit by simply adjusting where camera cuts fall in director track. As a general rule we try to only use three cameras if possible. Some larger and more complex scenes require more cameras but keeping a limited number of cameras to begin with greatly simplifies editing timelines we have found.
2.) Once we are happy with our layout (Scene), its timings and camera moves we lock scene down so there are no more major changes for animators to deal with. All shots are numbered at this point and we then export all of Unreal Camera Data out to Maya. We also export skeletal mesh characters in to Maya so animators can then animate characters based on our cameras. This saves animators time because they don’t have to animate things camera does not see and it leads to better animation in cinematics overall.
Please let us know if you need instructions on how to export data and we can send that along.
3.) Once animators have finished creating their animations for a shot we replace each numbered shot one by one in with their new refined animation and simply get rid of any old animation data in scene.
Example numbering for shots # 1–3 : 010,020,030
4.) We try not to change cameras at this point so that animators work is not lost and we only add minimal polish like better lighting or minimal ambient camera motion. For example we would not recompose a shot unless we have discussed it in depth with an animator and change is absolutely necessary. This avoids wasted work.
Notes:
1.) We review this entire process as we go and sometimes make modifications to shots, cameras and animations.
2.) At moment in UE4 relative to initial is not working but I believe we do have plans to add that, or a similar feature in future so that we can share cameras between Maya and Unreal easily.
Thanks for info! I hope your second note will happen sooner rather than later. Exporting is no problem but I didn’t use it since current build (1808360) still has an issue with exported camera’s rotation values in Maya. (I reported this issue on 09.08.13)
Hi! I noticed this thread and have interest. 
Sorry me for breaking your discussion…
1 Did you ever thought about some special editor for directors/animators, or maybe to change for it?
For example, you have few “frames”, which means specified camera’s track. And you can see this tracks with some storyboard’s pictures.
And it’s also would be usefull when this tracks can be saved in different packages to allow animators work with only one track and see results separately from others.
2 I think your animators use “Maya ART tools” for this. Can you specify how exactly it works?
Thank you!
Both of features you requested above are awesome ideas and already part of our plan for a future version of tools!
As for 2) with current , only way to do that in-editor is to use multiple assets (timelines) and influence same actor with both. Now different users can work on different tracks without colliding, but unfortunately you can’t “scrub” scene together very easily. As mentioned above, this workflow is important to us and we’re looking at how to improve it with a future version of tools!
–Mike
Hi Mike, Are you looking to implement exporting translational data / splines into 3dsMax? We’re animating fish and blocking out movement in before finessing in 3dsMax.
Hey Chard,
This is an old archived thread, here mostly for reference. If you have a question about system, you should make a new question so we can give you updated information. Thanks!
