Holiday break - Xmas Break

Overview:

1. Creation of the intro cutscene.
2. Lots of chocolate.

My Xmas break was an interesting one - mainly because I actually did some work. Usually for me, I find myself getting distracted and playing games. But this time I did some work, and was rather happy with what I created at the time.

I created a cutscene. Specifically, I created the opening to my level, which gives hints to the context and story behind my game. It's short, but I hope that it gives enough context for my game. The whole concept of this is that the friendly 'crystal' is being invaded by the enemy 'void', and  that the crystal activates to destroy all of the void in the area before 'summoning' the player to help clear out the rest and get to the end.

The concept isn't exactly clear, but I feel it's enough. It's far better than just starting the level, appearing, and not having any introduction at all, right? Not only did it help with that, but it allowed me to learn about Unreal Engine 4's Sequencer tool. This tool is rather new to me, because I was used to the old method of doing things (in UDK3), Matinee.

On the technical side of things, there's a couple of things to note. Before I get into that though, I'll point out the material of the portal, which is unused in the final game. While I was proud with how it was created, I wasn't really happy with the overall look. The material was made through using Photoshop to generate a seamless (looping) cloud texture, then importing it into UE4 and using it as the Diffuse and Emissive colours (multiplied by a shade of blue) and also using it as the 'Displacement' material (multiplied by a texture with a blurred black border, to keep the seams of the object itself intact) that effectively moves the verticies of an object based on the intensity of the texture. I then put in a 'Panner' on all three UV inputs for these textures, which caused the portal to flow like it does in the gif above. To get the normal map, I used an online site called NormalMap-Online to generate them.

A rather simple material, but one that comes out looking like a lot more work was put into it.

Now, for the cutscene itself. To simplify things, I'll list out the basics of what I did to make the cutscene:

• Created a new track in the sequencer, naming it correctly and adding a camera asset to it.
• Linking a camera into the sequencer, then creating the correct camera movements and applying that to the Sequencer.
• Created multiple 'tentacle' assets for the void, which were also used in later parts of the level for decoration (Image #1, below).
• Animated the tentacles through the use of Sequencer to make them appear to be 'growing' towards the crystal.
• Created a special material for causing the visual distortion in the 'boom' that is used during the crystals activation.
• Added and changed the 'fade' track that's used for the fade in and 'explode to white' made during the explosion.
• Created the blueprint code in the Level Blueprint for activating the cutscene, spawning the character, skipping the cutscene and switching to gameplay (Image #2, below).

Image #1

Image #2. Blueprintue link here!

I was rather happy with the result at the time! The final version of this cutscene, par from the portal visuals, hasn't changed at all. Since it's meant to be short, there's not much room for adding more content to the cutscene - and well, doing so would be rather pointless.

But that was the work I got over the Xmas holiday. I also had a lot of chocolate, which I really should've saved. It was all gone in just a couple of days.