You need to create game cinematics. What are the best tools to help you get started?

Exhaustive and detailed information about the storyline foundation, followed by a virtual thesaurus of character development, past media content, current illustrations of each character, their primary supporting prop materials, actionables, vehicles, environments, aesthetics, color palette and how these elements combined are composed to work together. Next, I would go through an extensive process of translating all this material into my own workflow, toolsets and learn its visual, actionable ebb-an-flow like a second-nature, before beginning the process of chopping up the script and breaking it down into a shot-by-shot booklet of storyboards and prep/production internal notes, rig-trees and technical documentation. It's a beautiful thing.

Or. You can use blender’s video sequence editor and create scene clips so that you can move cameras without having to render/draw each shot and if you learn to mark as assets with linked libraries and overrides, you can skip the layout and shot setup, keeping everything live with the final edit in blender.

Utilizing these foundational tools is the starting platform for getting content into game development software such as Unity 3D or Unreal Engine. Specifically Unreal Engine (UE4, UE5), has integration with these software(s) like 3D Studio Max allowing for easy(er) integration. See DataSmith After getting accustomed to 3D Modeling and texturing it would be best to look at game engines like a video editing tool for 3D content. You can create timelines, keyframes, and also use motion capture, high res textures and custom environments. Utilizing the Game Engines with the current advancements in Realtime Raytracing, allows for a speedy Animation, Rendering, and effects as opposed to bucket rendering within 3D software alone.

You can also use video-to-video prompts with AI using comfyUI, AnimateDiff, AnimateAnyone, controlNet and various AI models. These let you transform your video footage into whatever you like, but can sacrifice control. There are also websites that do this for you (like sora, stable video diffusion, pika, runway) but you will have even less control. If you want something precise you need to train your own LoRa’s and IpAdapters from your own synthetic datasets. This way you get the best of prompt exploration with 3D animation control. Conversely you can also build your own instagram or snapchat AR filters to augment and warp your footage directly to look like the characters that you then insert into a 3D scenes as 2D video cards.

After learning the material-creators world, like a new skin, I am committed to and emotionally invested in delivering a perfect, fleshed-out version of the source material's style. 3D building, painting, lighting the models and then rigging them for performance, is an environmental vacuum of marathon focus and consistent momentum. This is when the phones, ringers and email notifications are switched off and my team and I, come out the other end, having created the new world in which we will inhabit and bring into 24-frame sequential actions. The sheer amount of orchestrated mental energy burned, is staggering. So many hours and so many calories are burned up, during the build process as a whole. It is the next beautiful phase.

Proficient in all things Adobe, I will take all rendered alpha-matted layers of each animation sequence to complete a 1st draft composite, to be dropped into the master edit timeline with initial synched audio scratch tracks. Once, a completed master timeline is ready for rendered-review, notes will be taken and any reworks will be executed, before final compositing of all tweaked animation layers. Next, the audio tracks will be locked, followed by final sound FX and foley. After 2nd draft review, last tweaks and final sign-off approval, the master timeline will be locked off, fully rendered and set up for final presentation. By this last phase, the final draft will be reviewed by several sets of fresh eyes/ears and then delivered.