Using Capture Track to render an Image Sequence

Overview

You can add a Capture track to your Director node. This track allows you to setup properties for capturing image sequences(.jpg, .hdr, .bmp, .tga) that you can stitch together in any video editing software.

Terminology

Capture Frames is the term used for capturing frame by frame image data from the engine to your HDD. The setup is easy and quick and since each frame is put out into a single image the bane of low fps can be circumvented here.

Also, rendering out high resolutions can be easily achieved using this method. The following few and easy steps will show you how to do it. This document mainly covers cinematic usage (which means the Track View setup).

Setup

Add a Director(Scene) node to your trackview sequence.

Add a Capture track to the Director(Scene) node you just created (notice the picture is slightly cut for display convenience).

Add a Frame node to the capture track.

Double click the node you just added to bring up the properties of it.

Here is what the settings do:

Parameter	Use	Description
Duration	Capture duration in seconds.	Set the desired amount of capture time here.
Time Step	Forces fixed framerate.	To force a fixed frame rate of a certain speed use the command t_fixedstep N. Where N specifies time step, which is calculated as follows: time step = 1 second / amount of frames. Example: 1 second / 30 frames = 0.033333333 and 0.0166666667 would be 60 frames per second. If you want to record a standard PAL speed video (25 fps), use a value of 0.04.
Output Format	Choose your desired image format from the pulldown menu.	The captured pictures can be in several different file formats. A good choice for average quality is the .jpeg format, whereas .tga or .bmp are better for higher quality, and HDR for pictures in high dynamic range quality. Note: Currently, only .jpg and .tga file formats are supported.
Output Prefix	Puts its input before the numbers of the captured images.	It is recommended to use the same prefix as the sequence is named to keep a clear overview of the capture outputs.
Output Folder	Defines the folder where the image output is stored.	If left with the default it will create a `CaptureOutput` folder in the root folder of your build directory. Otherwise you can freely choose any path and folder you would like here.
Buffer	Sets up different capture formats.	Frames&misc will output .tga files and .hdr information. Just frame will output normal image data in the format you set. Stereo is used for capturing stereo 3D so 1 frame per eye is captured. This needs a proper stereo 3D setup before it can be used. Note: Currently, only "Just frame" mode is supported.
Just 1 Frame	Chooses between single or multi-frame recording.	Can be used as an alternative way to get single, automated screenshot from a sequence.

Rendering

To render your sequence, you just need to play the sequence through Flow Graph and the capturing will begin when you Switch to Game mode.

Make sure the Director node that has the Capture track is Set as Active.

You will get a folder with the image sequence in your build's root directory.

Comments

In general, capturing image data this way will make the game you're recording almost crawl to a halt. This is normal and should not cause you to worry as the final, pieced-together product will not have any stuttering in it.

Documentation