Storyboard Render Queue

After selecting Storyboard Render Queue in the dropdown menu, click on the clapperboard icon in the Sequencer tool bar.

You will be displayed the panel Storyboard Render Options. If it’s empty, make sure the option Show engine content is enabled in the settings (gear icon).

You will be displayed several Movie Pipeline Master Config (MPMC) files. Ignore the default files inherited from Unreal Engine (Still_Draft and Still_Ultra) to focus on MPMC_Storyboard_Sequence and MPMC_Storyboard_ffmpeg.

The first one will use directly go to the Movie Render Queue, where you can decide to render the movie as a sequence using PNG, JPEG, Avid or AppleProRes codecs. The second is an advanced option requiring an external library named FFmpeg.

MPMC_Storyboard_Sequence

This option will let you export image or video sequences from your storyboard. After selecting MPMC_Storyboard_Sequence, you will be displayed this panel. Click again on “MPMC_Storyboard_Sequence” in the category “Settings” to display the Settings.

In these settings, you can enable one or several export file formats, such as:

• JPG or PNG sequences

• WAV audio

Note

Note that rendering the audio as WAV will litterally render a .wav file. There is no way to render a sequence with sound embedded.

• Mov file formats using AppleProRes codecs (Windows only!)

• Avi file formats using Avid codec (Windows only!)

You can also change Deferred Renderings :

To know more about Deferred Renderings*, please read this documentation about Render Passes.

And you can also change a few parameters to manage :

• Anti-aliasing

To know more about Anti-aliasing, please read this documentation on Unreal Engine website.

• Burn in information to be displayed on the footage as an overlay.

More information to come later

• Console Variables to adjust some parameters.

To know more about Console Variables, please read this documentation Variables Editor.

In the end, you will just have to select the final Output of the rendered sequence.

You can then hit “Accept” and hit “Render local” to export your animatic as a sequence.

If you need additional information, please read this documentation.

MPMC_Storyboard_Video_FFmpeg

FFmpeg is an external and open-source library to render video files with various codecs and settings. This library must be installed separately to render films and sequences with Odyssey.

Windows

Go to this website and download the pack ffmpeg-release-essentials.zip.

Unzip the content of this file (make sure you have an application to do so, such as 7zip.) and place the unzipped folder anywhere on your computer (it must be a local disk). For this lesson, the folder was renamed ffmpeg and is placed into the disk G:\

Installing process is finished.

Mac

Go to this webpage and download the pack ffmpeg-[version-number] (as a zip). Once downloaded, double-click ffmpeg-[Version-Number].zip. This will extract it using the Archive Utility and create an executable ffmpeg file.

Open a new Finder window (use [cmd + N] and go to your Home folder (use [cmd + shift + H]) and create a new folder called FFmpeg. In this folder, create another one called bin. Move the executable ffmpeg file to this bin folder.

Now it is time to authorize this library to run on your Mac OS. To do so:

• Double-click the file called ffmpeg.

• You should see an error message “FFmpeg can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer”. Click “OK”.

• Go to Applications > System Preferences > Security and Privacy and click on the General tab.

• At the bottom of the window, you will see a message saying that FFmpeg was blocked. Click “Open Anyway”.

• If you do not see this message in the General tab, double-click ffmpeg again in the bin folder.

• You may have to click the “unlock” button and enter your password to be able to click “Open Anyway”.

• If you see another popup that says “FFmpeg is from an unidentified developer. Are you sure you want to open it?”, click “Open”. If you don’t get this popup, just go to the same file and double-click it again.

When you double-click the file, a Terminal window may open. Keep the Terminal open until you see a message confirming you can close it.

Installing process is finished

Settings

Now FFmpeg is properly installed on your computer, you can finally go back to your Unreal Engine project and open Storyboard Render Options.

Executable Path

The first and most important one to configure, is the executable path.

• On Windows, the path will depend on where ffmpeg.exe was placed, such as C:\[path]\bin\ffmpeg.exe. According to this lesson, the path will be G:\ffmpeg\bin\ffmpeg.exe

• On Mac, the path will be /Users/[user-name]/FFmpeg/bin/ffmpeg

Then hit [Enter]. If FFmpeg executable is set properly, the tiny warning signal will vanish. If it’s still there, make sure there is no mistakes or typos in the path.

Codec Preset

FFmpeg offers many different video and audio codec to be selected in the list on the right.

Video codec:

Audio codec:

Using FFmpeg will only let you export video files, which means you will have to set an output file extension for a video : mp4, mov, mkv, avi, etc.

If you are not too familiar with FFmpeg, you can use the preset available in Codec Preset menu.

In the part Command Line Arguments, you will hve to possibility to modify and add specific parameters. To know more about FFmpeg command lines, please read this documentation.

Render video with FFmpeg

Just like in the lesson above about MPMC_Storyboard_Sequence, you can also change various parameters such as Deferred Renderings, Anti-aliasing, Burn in and Console Variables. Once your settings are ready, double click on MPMC_Storyboard_FFmpeg to open the Movie Render Queue panel. If necessary, you can change the path to the output by clicking here:

Then, hit “Render local” to export your animatic as a video encoded by FFmpeg.