Judah Mantell

Last Update 2 years ago

The Storyboard mode is where you can easily build storyboards of your scenes, perfect for planning out shots, pitch-vis, or pre-vis. 

They then can be exported to a fully self-contained PDF or HTML file for easy sharing and editing.

An example of an exported storyboard can be found here.

Storyboard Editor Overview

The storyboard editor is one of the simplest aspects of SceneForge Studio, and is super easy to use. It is made up of three sections.

Building a Storyboard

Each scene currently has one active storyboard associated with it.

Every time you take a shot in the Shoot Mode, it will show up in the Frame Selector. It contains the actual camera view, the floor plan at that moment, as well as the properties of the camera at that time (exposure, focal length, etc.).

To add frames to the timeline, click on the Add Frame button on the left side of the Timeline.  This will add an empty frame.  Selecting it will display it's full active frame info.  To assign a shot to this frame slot, while selected, click on a frame from the options on the left.

The active panel will then display the frame, its shot info, floor plan, number, and fields for adding other bits of information to the shot.

You can delete frames by clicking on the Delete Frame button, or the delete/backspace key on your keyboard,

You can rearrange the frames by dragging the little arrows, using the Shift Frame buttons on the left, or by holding Shift + Arrow Keys on your keyboard

Storyboard Naming Conventions

At the top of the active frame properties and at the bottom of each frame on the timeline is a shot number.  For example "Shot 1-A".

The first number is taken by the index of the scene in the list of scenes in your project.  You can also override this number as explained below.

Different directors/artists/filmmakers have different ways they like to name shots in their storyboards.  That's why the naming convention is fully customizable using the "Configure Storyboard" menu.

Using the menu above, you can change each element of the storyboard's naming convention.  This gets applied automatically to all shots in the project.

Continued Shots

Sometimes storyboards need to indicate that a shot as multiple camera movements, and not just a harsh cut.  That's what the "Continue" option is for in the naming convention.

To continue a shot, click on the little arrow icon at the bottom of the shot on the timeline.

This will use the configured naming convention to update the names and numbers of all frames on the timeline. 

Shots newly continued will share the same shot name as the previous one, if it's not already set to something else.

In exported storyboards, continued shots are indicated by an arrow continuing through those shots.

Exporting Storyboards

To export your storyboard, click the export button at the top of the active panel. 

This will open a menu allowing you to configure different elements of your exported storyboard.

You can change the export format, and toggle what content is visible in the export.

The preview on the left gives a basic overview of what the output file will look like.

Depending on the format selected and the amount of content (frames, elements, etc), the export can take a few seconds.

An example of an exported storyboard can be found here.