Friday, October 12, 2007
Basic Matinee Sequence
It is difficult to tell what can be classified as “Basic” when it comes to matinee. There was, I felt, a need to maintain basic camera pathing and shots with some degree of interest in the subject matter. I chose to put together a small industrial style level. My reasons for this were purely practical, the abundance of both textures and static meshes within UnrealEd’s library of files.
The level itself is littered with a few simple particle effects and moving doors, just to try and add a little life to what is, essentially, a very dry scene. The level was lit with a sunlight actor, with different colour lights picking out small details. This gave the area a much greater depth, creating a suitable aura for the Industrial motif. If I had had more time I would have liked to make the area about twice as large, this would have given me more scope for using a greater variety of shots in the matinee sequence.
Using the cameras was somewhat more problematic. I started off trying to use the camera’s own point of view, but this was very limited in terms of what I could look at, I found. To see a specific area I had to set up three or four cameras, and even then the paths didn’t seem to respond as I wanted them.
I experimented with LootAt targets. While they offered greater flexibility I still couldn’t achieve what I wanted. Eventually, after playing around with options and looking at various articles, I found an answer. I created a second scene manager that controlled the Target actor, moving it along an adjacent path to the camera. This gave me the flexibility to control the camera’s movement and point of view simultaneously.
I would like to work more on this level, in order to expand it into something that I could use for my portfolio, or perhaps use it as a template for later work.
It is difficult to tell what can be classified as “Basic” when it comes to matinee. There was, I felt, a need to maintain basic camera pathing and shots with some degree of interest in the subject matter. I chose to put together a small industrial style level. My reasons for this were purely practical, the abundance of both textures and static meshes within UnrealEd’s library of files.
The level itself is littered with a few simple particle effects and moving doors, just to try and add a little life to what is, essentially, a very dry scene. The level was lit with a sunlight actor, with different colour lights picking out small details. This gave the area a much greater depth, creating a suitable aura for the Industrial motif. If I had had more time I would have liked to make the area about twice as large, this would have given me more scope for using a greater variety of shots in the matinee sequence.
Using the cameras was somewhat more problematic. I started off trying to use the camera’s own point of view, but this was very limited in terms of what I could look at, I found. To see a specific area I had to set up three or four cameras, and even then the paths didn’t seem to respond as I wanted them.
I experimented with LootAt targets. While they offered greater flexibility I still couldn’t achieve what I wanted. Eventually, after playing around with options and looking at various articles, I found an answer. I created a second scene manager that controlled the Target actor, moving it along an adjacent path to the camera. This gave me the flexibility to control the camera’s movement and point of view simultaneously.
I would like to work more on this level, in order to expand it into something that I could use for my portfolio, or perhaps use it as a template for later work.
# posted by Matt @ 6:21 AM 
