Engagement 9k+ views

Topics Include camera settings, viewport UI, shortcuts

As part of a marketing campaign for Epic Games, this video series showcases Twinmotion to Unreal Engine tutorials focused on elements in Unreal Engine that can expand projects started in Twinmotion.

This video guides creators on the simple process for using a composition grid overlay in Unreal Engine. Learn how to create a camera, adjust focus settings, and enhance your composition using the cinematic viewport and grid overlays. Discover tips on locking your camera view and working in multiple viewports for precise scene placement.

Credit Epic Games

Model Epic Games

3D Environment Epic Games

Script Sam Anderson

Voiceover Sam Anderson

Editing Sam Anderson

Tools Twinmotion, Unreal Engine, Adobe Premiere, NVIDIA A6000, Atomos Ninja, Apollo Solo, RE20

Transcript

00:00 Introduction

00:20 Set up the camera

01:24 Edit camera settings

02:54 Lock camera view

03:21 Multiple viewports

04:02 Conclusion

Introduction

00:00 Hello, and thanks for joining this tutorial on how to use a composition grid overlay in Unreal Engine. I have brought in the Twinmotion demo scene into Unreal Engine using the Twinmotion to Unreal Engine workflow. Now let's set up a camera for the view I have on the screen. It's in a standard perspective viewport with the path tracing turned on.

Set up the camera

00:20 If I'd like to create a camera of this view, I can do so by going over to the left hand side, going down to Create Camera Here and selecting Cine Camera Actor. Now you'll notice that on the right hand side, the camera appears in our Outliner and we're getting a little preview of the camera here. If I'd like to expand that to the main viewport, I can go over to Perspective and go down to pick the camera.

00:59 Now you'll notice that there are a lot of images here already. These are the images that have been brought into Unreal Engine from Twinmotion. But we'll be looking for this camera actor here. So I'll go ahead and select it. Now you'll notice that it applied default camera settings, which is great for many aspects, but here we're a little zoomed in, and so the focus is not quite right.

Edit camera settings

01:25 In order to change that, I can go over to the Outliner, make sure I have my actor selected, and then scroll down to current camera settings. Now I'll go over to the Focus Settings here and you'll see we have several different settings we can control here. In order to let the camera know where to focus for this project, I'm going to use the eyedropper tool here and select the corner of this table.

01:53 Now there are many different options we have for controlling our lens. So, just setting the focal length here and controlling some aspect ratio settings here as well. Now, if I'd like to edit the composition of the camera, I'm going to go over and change a few things in the viewport to set me up for success.

02:12 So first I'll go up to where it says Perspective and I'm going to select Cinematic Viewport. Now you'll see that it jumped us out to the standard perspective view. I'll go ahead and go back into my camera. And now I'm going to go over to the right hand side and you'll see that we have some more options here while we're in the Cinematic Viewport.

02:36 So I can hit this dropdown here and toggle in between some of the grids here. So I'll go ahead and do this grid three by three. And then I can navigate in my scene to get the view I'm looking for.

Lock camera view

02:54 Now if I'd like to lock my camera view, you can go over to the right hand side, right click it, go down to Transform, and Lock Actor Movement.

03:06 This will inform you it is locked by giving you a note on the left hand side. Now, I won't be able to move the viewport and continue to work in this scene.

Multiple viewports

03:21 If I wanted to work in multiple viewports, I could go up to the right hand side, select this icon of four, and now I could curate the way in which I work. So you'll see we have a Top, Right, and Back view using wireframe. If I better wanted to place myself in these viewports, I could select the table dining here, hit F on my keyboard, and it's going to zoom the viewport into that object. You can see in the Top viewport, I can move my camera around here and understand its relationship to the table. Now, you might want to go in and hide some elements so that the wireframe isn't as dense.

Conclusion

04:02 I hope this is a helpful tip for placing your cameras inside Unreal Engine. Thanks for joining.