The trench

My first Unreal Engine 5 project: a short cinematic and a playable samurai. Manchuria, 1917, in a Russo-Japanese War that never ended. The trench you're standing in is a sketch in three.js. The real scene is 28 GB.

0:38, Unreal Engine 5

The shots: a crane sinking into the trench, a long lens through the haze, a close-up as a shell lands near him, over his shoulder, then low behind him as he walks on into the blast.

Inspired by: Trench Crusade, Warhammer 40,000, Warhammer Fantasy, Path of Exile, and dark fantasy games in general.

An oversized samurai in lacquered armor walks a First World War trench with a sword and shield while his inner voice speaks in Japanese. The set is Epic's free Military Trench sample from Fab. The samurai, the cameras, the sound and the code are mine.

The whole cinematic is a Python script run in the open editor: cameras, cuts, his walk along a traced path, the fog and the title card. Each note from a review is one rebuild

The samurai is a Tripo model rigged on Mixamo and retargeted onto his own skeleton in Unreal, with an armor material written in code

Sound placed from the shots: the build writes out when each foot lands and where the camera is, so his steps are loud only when the camera is near his feet

The voice is an ElevenLabs voice I designed, processed to sit under the scene like a thought

A C++ player character: walk, run, mouse look, draw and sheathe the sword

A four-swing combo from Mixamo's sword-and-shield moves. A click mid-swing queues the next one, and moving cancels the recovery

Footsteps read from the animation: an armor clank and a mud thud on each foot plant, found from the ankle heights, quieter with distance

Three companions who follow in a loose group, step aside when blocked, and catch up when they fall behind

Made with Unreal Engine 5.8, C++, Python editor scripting, Tripo, Mixamo, ElevenLabs, Claude Code

The trench went dark after the shell blast.WhyThe map uses a fixed exposure with a +3.5 boost, and the shot's own exposure setting started from zero.FixEvery camera's exposure starts from the map's value.

A dark band ran along the horizon.WhyThe sample's fog stopped dead at 100 m and lit itself black.FixThe cinematic animates the fog: thinner, no cutoff, a warm glow.

His texture went missing on import.WhyUnreal's importer choked on the "…" in Tripo's file name.FixImported the color map again from a clean file name.

The ending's title card showed over the opening.WhyAdding an object from the level to a sequence also adds a track that keeps it on the whole time.FixThe build deletes that track and sets when each object appears.

Props I moved by script snapped back.WhyIn a World Partition map every object is its own file, and a move isn't saved unless the object is marked as changed.FixThe script marks each one and saves its file.

Two samurai in Play.WhyWith the sequence open in the editor, Play also showed the editor's frozen copy.FixThe build closes the sequence when it's done.