UE4 Cinematics Progress-log

For the month of December and into January. I am making it my priority to learn UE4 Sequencer for use in Game Trailers.

Although, to my knowledge there are no pure game builds I can download and have Particle Effects, etc... all ready to drop into place. To stay motivated, I have decided to export 1000's of Fortnite assets. Characters, enviroments and Animations. This also gets me a bit of social media attention as Fortnite has a interactive community.
A lot of the Animations were not made to work in Sequencer either, and need hard-scripting (which I have no Idea what methods they used). For example, gun fire animations are all broken and most likely are calculated with in-game recoil of each weapon. Which I obviously don't have access to.
The same goes with Particle effects. So I will be using a few asset pack Particles, etc... to be a filler and for pure educational purposes.

Check back every few days for updates on progress and small rendered scene's whilst I try learn new things.

Day 1

Spent hours exporting 1000's of character animations and Fortnite game assets to help support a whole-overall feel & experience when watching the renders.

Having these assets ready to go will help me jump in and let the creative idea's flow within the UE4 workspace. 

Day 2

I have bought a placeholder forest environment that has close shading/lighting to what Fortnite has. I have then populated the environment with a few props from Fortnite. Including a few Log Cabin buildings, Batch of cut down logs, Archery Target and Campfire that I then placed a fire particle effect on, as well as a Point Light to fake the fire lighting on the environment and characters.

The below test render sequence (edited into a tiny montage) contains;
- Fortnite Emote Animation
- Fortnite Walk_Forward Animation
- Imported Tactical Assault Rifle parented to the right hand of character
- Fortnite Tactical Assault Rifle Animation blend on Character (Human Skeleton) and Tactical Assault Rifle (Gun Skeleton)
- Camera Controls including camera position, rotation, FoV, Depth of Field and Curve editor to smooth movement
- Attaching the camera to a bone of an Object
- 4K Render Settings

This is my first real render test from UE4.

YouTube video aspect ratio seems to be bugged on this site for custom web pages. Watch in fullscreen or click the "YouTube" logo at the bottom right to view on YouTube.

Day 3

Made a teaser/one shot scene to practice for the upcoming Fortnite x Starwars event.

Doing this I learn't;
- Creating my own animations within UE4 for custom bone movement and blending them into existing ones
- Making an animation Additive so it does not effect other parts of the body that it isn't meant to change when blending
-  Creating Camera Shake blueprints for use within sequencer

I posted this on twitter and it received a lot of compliments from people in the Fortnite & Rendering communities:
https://twitter.com/CkayCinematic/status/1205579330232967168 & https://twitter.com/FNBRHQ/status/1205586238549512195 

As well as on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/FortNiteBR/comments/ea98ev/excited_for_tomorrows_event_here_and_a_few_extra/