Hey again everyone! Hope you're all doing swell on this Friday 13th and are having a day filled with luck and good fortune! It dawned on me that when we talked about the voice acting we're currently working into the game, we didn't really cover cutscenes all that much, and that's what I wanted to talk a little bit more about today. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/17c359b3a53aa7d0fc3c31aabf91358e6cea5d55.gif[/img] In Vahrin's Call, we're using cutscenes in two main places. [list] [*] To introduce a new boss [*] In NPC conversations that progress the main story [/list] Both of these, the latter especially, are very time consuming to implement. It requires several of us on the team working together to get everything functioning as intended. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/fd4dc5ba994fd1617f0423ef6cabcc78e3052ccd.gif[/img] In the case of NPC conversations which require more attention to detail, we have a step-by-step process that we follow for each cutscene. Working in UE4's Sequencer, we begin simply by creating a new sequence and then positioning each character where we want them in the scene. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/78600bcbebd8d0abd366e9675e9604e1e82f8450.gif[/img] Next, we import every line of dialogue that will be used in the scene and time them to play like a natural, back and forth conversation. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/87302faa0e5853f84590a0642dc88e88a9dd5720.gif[/img] Once we're happy with the flow of the conversation, we mark specific parts of the sequence with key frames. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/c9387c4a0fc026b33ddf0ae405c7ea3b2615b402.png[/img] Thanks to a system set up by our programmer, this will allow you to skip to the next line of dialogue in a conversation with the press of a button. We then go through the cutscene, adding animations and facial expressions to characters, as well as setting up where we want characters to look at certain points in the conversation. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/31e1e0ab0e160ae3018983ede897f7375353bf96.gif[/img] The next step is adding different camera shots. This step takes the longest, as adjusting the timing and positioning of each camera can be tricky to get right and involves a lot of fine-tuning. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/a85dc72d76568569183d589d2ec4f46d3918349d.png[/img] After this, all that's left is putting on the finishing touches! In this stage, we may add a fade to the start or end of the cutscene and/or make lighting adjustments. As you guys can see there's quite a bit that goes into making each of the cutscenes in Vahrin's Call. I hope you can agree that all the time and effort we put into them is absolutely worth it though! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33742756/e554a9e68cbf115df46e94ef13187a60848bd037.gif[/img] I know you haven't had the chance to see too many in action just yet and of course everything is currently a work in progress, but I'm looking forward to showing you how it's all progressed once things are more polished. As always, I hope you enjoyed today's post and we hope to see you here again next Friday! Cheers all~