YEAR 2 PORTFOLIO
Mechanics
CINEMATOGRAPHY
A large aspect of video game presentation and marketing is how you reflect your finished product, whether it consists of a cinematic walkthrough, a gameplay demo or a trailer.
No matter which one is chosen, you must ensure that the right camera angles, direction of walkthroughs and editing is completed. This will further showcase your hard work and attention to detail on the assets and mechanics you have implemented into your project.
Within my project, due to the simple and short design of my alleyway, I chose to create a cinematic walkthrough of the scene. This in turn allowed me to further immerse the watcher into the surroundings by condensing the project into 1 video.
RECORDING
Using OBS Studio, I recording a short video of the player walking through the alleyway, looking around at the key aspects of the scene, whilst also maintaining a realistic walk speed and head movement.
This in turn not only allowed for every detail of the alleyway to be showcased, but it also made the video seem more realistic and immersive for the watcher, as the player is moving and looking around similar to someone in real life.
EDITING
Once I had recorded the walkthrough, I then decided to edit the video using Window's built-in editing software.
Firstly, I cropped the start and end of the video, making sure that it started when the scene was playing, rather than showing the editing window of UE5 for a brief period. Editing the end of the video also allowed for a smooth ending to the walkthrough, rather than it ending in the player standing by the exit for a prolonged time. This overall made the watching process of the project more immersive and enjoyable, as it only shows the finished product.
In addition, I also added a "fade out to black" effect at the end of the video, just as the player walks to the exit. This also enhanced the visual quality of the walkthrough by reducing the amount of free space shown in the video.
CAMERA MECHANICS
Finally, I wanted to increase the realism of the walkthrough, in order to fully immerse the watcher into the environment. I achieved this through creating a realistic camera-bobbing mechanic, which resulted in the player's camera moving up and down whilst idle, as well as increasing this idea when walking.
I achieved this through a sequence of different coding modules within the third person character blueprint, which increased the oscillation and pitch to different values depending on whether the player was standing still or walking.
Overall, the addition of this mechanic allowed for the watcher to feel fully immersed into the alleyway; the realistic movement paired very well with all of the other realistic mechanics, resulting in a product that reflects the realism concept.
CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, I believe that the way that you present your final product is just as important than the actual production and planning of it; using several different video effects and skills can re-emphasise the theme you are trying to portray.
I think that my overall presentation of this project went pretty well. The addition of realistic movement added a lot of immersion and overall quality to the scene.
However, I also believe that I could of done a few things better. For example, parts of the recording briefly shows sections of the scene that are not finished or less interesting, which takes you out of the immersion for a second as the watcher. In addition, I also believe that the walk cycle that I chose for the player was a bit robotic, and not as realistic as I would have wanted.
In the future, I would like to re-do the video again, not only to showcase just the scene and not empty areas, but to also retry the movement of the player.
REFERENCES
This includes all of the tutorials and software's I used in order to create the cinematic.