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Cinematic Editor for Recording and Scripting Cinematic sequences

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Cinematic Editor


 
Cinematic Editor is intended to create in-game cutscenes. Using it you can record and play back smooth camera and entities movement on scene, add effects and scripts at certain points of cinematic.

 

Video:

 


 

Steps for Using the Cinematic Editor

Load scene and open Cinematic Editor.
To create a new cinematic, click on "Create cinematic" in the editor or drag drop cinematic asset on scene from AE.
 
When creating a new сinematic, clip for camera is ready to record will be automatically created.
 
Take a few snapshots of keyframes by pressing "K" hotkey on your keyboard or click the "Snap keyframe" in the editor.
 
Click "Play" to playback the recorded cinematic.
 
Cinematic is ready. It will be saved when saving the scene.
 
To play cinematic at scene startup, see this tutorial:

Overview of the Cinematic Editor User Interface

 
 
 
To cinematic record is used Cinematic Editor. The figure marked with the following elements:
  1. Creation/deletion and selection of current cinematic.
  2. Playback panel. Lamp - a selection of the current clip to the record.
  3. Speed scale. 
  4. Snap keyframe button.
  5. Visualization Mode.
  6. Video recording panel.
  7. Tracks.
  8. Clips.
  9. Envelope with keyframes.
  10. Timeline.

Components of a Cinematic Asset

 
 
 
Cinematic consists of tracks.
 
Tracks consist of clips. Within a single track, clips are sorted by the playback time and can not overlap in time. Ie tracks can be executed in parallel, and clips in the track only sequentially.
 
Clips contains envelopes with keyframes. Change of some properties of the object happens with the help of envelopes . For example the position of the camera or the intensity of effect. Each object type has its own set of envelopes.
 
Envelopes consist of keyframes, which are sorted by time. Value of a property is recorded in keyframes, value will be interpolated between frames.
 
You can draw an analogy with a timeline based video editors, for example:
 
 
 

Types of Clips (Tracks or Elements) that Can Be Added to a Cinematic (for each Cinematic-Controlled Entity or Camera Track)

 
 5
 
  • Camera Clip - The most often used clip. Recorded camera movement on scene.
  • Effects - visual effect. For example screen fading, motion blur, under water, old movie etc ...The envelope is set to one or more properties of the effect. And the effect property is interpolated in time.
  • Action Clip- Support for various scripts and actions during the clip. For example animation, sound playback, IronPython script. It does not use envelopes and frames.
  • Entity Clip / Positional Clip -same as the camera clip, but there is a movement of entity / avatar in the scene.

Editing cinematic in the editor.


 
 
To add a new track, click on the empty space of editor and select "Add Track" in context menu.
 
To add clips, select a track and select the desired type of clip "Add ... clip" from context menu.
 
If there is a record of positions on scene, only one clip can be selected for recording. Using the context menu "Select for record", or button with lamp in the editor.
 
You can edit the StartTime and Lenght properties for clip, clip envelopes will be shifted along with clip.
 
Track and the clip can be temporarily disabled. see the property "Enabled" in OE.
 
To add an envelope, select the clip and add one of the available envelopes.
 

Manual addition of frames:

In context menu of envelope:
  • Add KeyFrame -addition of a new frame at the end of the envelope. (Duration of the envelope will be increased)
  • Add KeyFrame at Time - addition of a new frame in the position of the current value on timeline.
 
In KeyFrame menu:
  • Insert Before KeyFrame - insert frame before selected.
  • Insert After KeyFrame - insert frame after selected.
Move Cinematic to KeyFrame - move timeline position to selected keyframe time.
 
You can edit the properties of StartTime and TimeIncrement for the frame. If you change the TimeIncrement, subsequent frames in the envelope will be shifted.
 
Value of keyframe property is edited in OE.

 

Editing and visualization of сinematic on scene.



 
 
In addition to editing of cinematic the editor, positional envelopes can be edited  in scene Design mode.
 
Each keyframe for positional envelope is a position on scene and displayed as a camera model. It can be moved with the mouse or colored axes control.
 
To align existing keyframe to camera position. Select this keyframe and select "Align KeyFrame to Camera" in Cinematic Editor context menu.
 
The editor has three modes of visualization: 1) None - visualization is disabled. 2) Current - displays splines of selected/current cinematic. 3) All - Displays all splines of all cinematics on the scene.
 
 

Cinematic properties.


 
 
  • InputBlocking - block user input while cinematic.
  • Looped - looped playback.
  • VideoRecorder - a group of properties for video recording.
  • Visualization Mode - the current visualization mode.
 
Properties available through the dialog "Properties" from Cinematic Editor:
  • DefaultTimeIncrement - the movement between two frames. Default - 2
  • StopCinematicKey - button to interrupt playing of cinematic. Default - Escape.
 

Video Recording.

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