UNREAL ENGINE: HOW TO WORK WITH SEQUENCER

Director HaZ Dulull provides his expert tips for using Sequencer when creating cinematics in Unreal Engine

- HaZ Dulull

As a hands-on director working in Unreal Engine, I spend most of my time in the Sequencer tool. Everything within the shots and scenes is created in Sequencer; it’s your timeline for events, enabling full control over every single element/ asset that makes up your shot. Any asset parameters, camera controls, lights, post-processing and FX controls can be keyframed in Sequencer. In other words, Sequencer is your orchestra, and you are the conductor!

Working in Sequencer is specific to that shot and doesn’t affect other shots or the Level itself, which means you can have multiple artists working on tasks on different shots or Sequencer files, and the Level itself will not be affected by any of those changes in Sequencer (providing all the animation and keyframing you are doing is strictly in Sequencer). It also means the environment that is in the Level can be updated without affecting the work done in the Sequencer files. It’s a much cleaner and more holistic way of working in Unreal when it comes to cinematics.

I am currently in the postproduction stages of our animated feature film, RiFT (release date to be announced later this year). Every single shot in the animated movie was created inside of Unreal Engine, and then rendered out as final pixels in 4K EXRs and straight into DaVinci Resolve for editing and picture post.

The following handful of tips are what I use every day when creating shots in RiFT.

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