Bring Your Story to Life Using Unreal Engine Cinematics

Technology through the use of digital tools has made the creation of games and films easy. These tools can help you to make captivating stories from scratch, even without much knowledge of the industries. One such technology and perhaps the most exciting modern technology is the use of Unreal Engine. 

You can hire an Unreal game development company or learn to use it yourself for such services. In this blog, we will explore how you can use Unreal Engine cinematics to bring your story to life. 

Introduction to Unreal Cinematics and Sequencer 

Unreal Engine is one of the best tools in the gaming and filmmaking industry. 60% of game developers use it as the best alternative for easy creation. It’s not a new platform but it has been often updated with new and exciting features to improve user experience.

Among the best features are the cinematics and sequencer tools. Here is a brief introduction of the features.

Cinematics 

Graphic elements play a crucial in the experience of someone watching live TV broadcasts. Generally, they will either be pre-rendered animations or real-time graphics.

Pre-rendered animations are common in show openers, bumpers, and promos. Their complexity makes them harder to create, taking days or even weeks. Each frame takes minutes or sometimes hours to render – with each second of footage consisting of at least 50 frames.

Such high-quality cinematics require highly advanced rendering techniques.  Ray tracing, motion blur, and illumination are the most common techniques in films.  These graphics are mostly updated at the last minute in most news and sports programs. It all depends on the incoming data like sports scores, election results, and so on. 

For many years, such graphics were of very low quality compared to pre-rendered ones due to certain limitations. However, thanks to Unreal Engine, such issues are no longer a bother.  The real-time 3D creation tool has evolved to the point of bridging the gap between the editing and rendering capabilities of traditional broadcast applications and higher-end rendering features. 

Now, Unreal Game development services can deliver broadcast cinematics – film-quality motion graphics sequences that can be updated fast and conveniently. They allow creators and developers to come up with more engaging and higher-quality content. Whether you’re looking to enhance your game’s visuals or create dynamic broadcast cinematics, hiring game designers experienced in Unreal Engine can significantly elevate the visual quality of your projects. If you’re aiming to create engaging content, it’s crucial to hire game designers to craft sophisticated animations and real-time graphics that meet your vision.

Sequencer

Unreal Engine has established itself as the most popular option for game developers. But it has expanded into other industries over the past few years. The cinematics tools have been adopted widely in the creation of animation and films. 

Sequencer is a feature in Unreal Engine cinematics that gives you control over the scene through level sequences. Users can add tracks and create keyframes to manipulate objects, characters, and cameras with real-time capabilities. 

Sequencer offers many options to control your digital environment, allowing you to tell the story as you wish. You can move objects, set visibility, trigger animation, and do so much more with this tool. And the best part is that you can trigger bespoke gameplay. 

Why Use Unreal Engine Cinematics

One of the questions to ask when you want to hire Unreal engine game developers is why this engine is the best.  You want to tell your story in the most realistic manner, which is why you must be sure of the process your game development company is using. Or if you are the developer, understanding the features of your game development tool allows you to leverage the best parts.

Unreal Engine Cinematics has so many features that make it the most popular option for game app developers. It’s the most open and advanced real-time 3D creation platform in the world. In 2022, then engine was used on 153 projects, an increase of 44% from the previous year. Some of the features that make it popular include: 

• Real-time ray tracing allows you to render film-quality graphics while displaying them. 
• It features a Blueprint visual scripting system that’s perfect for authorizing interactivity without the need to write a line of code.
• The UE5 in the latest version of Unreal engine promises groundbreaking features like Lumen and Nanite. Lumen is a real-time global illumination and reflection system while the Nanite is a virtualized micropolygon geometry system that allows one to work with very high-resolution meshes.
• The MetaHuman integration is a framework for developing fully rigged photorealistic digital humans in the shortest time possible.

These features work together to deliver an unimaginable level of quality to real-time broadcast graphics. You can use them to tell your story in real time and people will relate directly to it. 

It’s even better that Unreal Engine is free to down. You can use it freely for creating television content.  It’s fully loaded with a production-ready setup out of the box,  with a source code provided for every feature.

Steps for Telling Your Story in Unreal Engine

Whereas it’s a good idea to hire an Unreal Engine game development company, sometimes learning to do it yourself helps you bring your ideas out better. You will get hundreds of hours of free tutorials and learning resources to point you in the right direction.

Telling your story through broadcast cinematic is similar to planning and executing branding graphics. It might take two to five weeks to bring your story to full realization.

Here is a summary of the steps to follow:

• Concept and Idea Creation:  You need to develop a core idea of your story and ensure you will communicate it effectively to the audience.
• Mood boarding: Here, you can create visual references that show the visual tone of your story. You can find ideas and inspiration from AI image generators available, like ArtStation and Vimeo.
• Animatic: create the main camera angles and pace of editing. Use Sequencer to define the main shots and set the pace/tone for your motion and intention.
• Detailing: get the details of animation, lighting, shading, and more. Unreal Engine offers many tools for this section.
• Effects: this is the final stage of visual development where you add effects like particles.
• Develop interactivity and Blueprint: at this stage, you create “hooks” to make graphics editable.
• Rendering setup: use Console Variables to define rendering details, usually per shot.
• Testing – test the graphics according to the show tweak whatever you can, and then show it.

This is how you can use Unreal Engine cinematics to bring your story to life. It could be a time-consuming and intense program, which is why recommend working with a highly experienced Unreal game development company.

Conclusion 

You may have an idea, a story that you want to share with the world but you don’t know how to do it. Shooting a real film can take a long time, and may not present the effect you want to your audience in good time. 

This is where the Unreal Engine tool can come in handy. With its cinematics feature, you can create an eye-grabbing presentation that will deliver your message perfectly. We hope this guide has been helpful to this extent. You can now tell your story.