November 27, 2019

Tips for submitting your Unreal Engine project for the annual student sizzle reel

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Education

By Melissa Robinson

Students around the world are learning Unreal Engine and real-time technology to enhance their portfolios and land amazing jobs across a wide range of industries including games, film and TV, automotive, architecture, and training and simulation.

Every year, hundreds of individual students and student teams submit video clips and trailers of their best Unreal Engine projects in the hope of getting featured in the annual, GDC-premiered Unreal Student Showcase.

Want your beautiful Unreal Engine project to be considered for inclusion in the showcase? Here are our top tips:

Give your project a unique title

In order to stand out, give your project a unique and creative name, and avoid labels like “Untitled” and “Environment Art." Remember, this project name will be the title that appears in the lower third graphic of the student sizzle reel.

2019 Student Sizzle Reel

Less is more, and quality over quantity

Capture attention by making sure your best work is presented at the beginning of your submission. In terms of video length, we prefer clips under 60 seconds for review purposes, but we do accept longer pieces such as a short film or game trailer.

Don’t put titles or logos over the video

For the official Unreal Engine student sizzle reel, we cannot use footage that has text, titles or logos overlayed on the video. Save those for the beginning and end of your footage. Please submit clean video footage only.

Record at a high resolution and stable frame rate

Strive to reach either a locked 30 or 60 frames per second and a minimum resolution of 1920x1080 for your video. If you don't have one, consider borrowing a powerful computer to capture footage.

For more details, find out about performance and profiling on our documentation page.

Make gameplay footage shine

If your project is a game, try out screen recording software like NVIDIA Shadowplay or Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) for direct gameplay capture. Again, using powerful hardware will help guarantee smooth, clear footage.

En Garde! Supinfogame RUBIKA gameplay

Explore cinematics with Sequencer

Gameplay is important and so is cinematography. Well-chosen camera angles, composition, and movement can make good art look great. If you use Sequencer to build your cinematics, you can export high-quality footage directly from the Editor for the best quality.

Here’s an example of great camera work:

E-751, New York Institute of Technology

Submit one project at a time

If you have multiple projects you would like us to consider, please submit them separately with unique names and with individual YouTube or Vimeo links.

Avoid default textures, characters, and other assets

Relying on the models, textures, and other assets that ship with Unreal Engine will make your project feel unfinished and it might not be chosen because of this. For example, we typically choose not to use footage featuring the generic Unreal Engine mannequin, so you’ll want to keep this in mind.

How to submit your project

Simply upload a video of your project to YouTube or Vimeo and submit it through the Student Showcase submission form along with the information requested below. As a reminder, please make sure your video has a minimum resolution of 1920x1080.

You’ll also need to include the following details:

Your name: The first and last name of the student submitting the project.
School name: The name of your university or college.
Project name: The title of your game, short film, or visualization.

You can also include the Unreal Engine logo on the title screen or in the credits of your video. Here is a great example:

The Resistance, University of Hertfordshire

Thanks for reading through all of the recommendations above, which we hope you'll follow once you're ready to share your work with us. And remember that while we can’t use every video that is sent our way, we always love to see your imagination come to life through Unreal!

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Ready to submit your Unreal Engine project? Submit now!

Tips for submitting your Unreal Engine project for the annual student sizzle reel

Give your project a unique title

Less is more, and quality over quantity

Don’t put titles or logos over the video

Record at a high resolution and stable frame rate

Make gameplay footage shine

Explore cinematics with Sequencer

Submit one project at a time

Avoid default textures, characters, and other assets

How to submit your project