- Scope a sprint goal at 2:00 that is genuinely demoable at 5:15 — and hit it.
- Use desk-crits to get unblocked instead of polishing quietly in a corner.
- Build a Sequencer cinematic of your project with authored cameras and cuts.
- Set up a Movie Render Queue job that renders documentation at portfolio quality.
2:00 · Brief The sprint contract
A sprint is a promise you make to the room at 2:00 and keep at 5:15. The brief today is short because the work is yours — but the contract has rules, and so does documentation.
How the sprint runs
At 2:00 sharp, your sprint goal goes on the board: one sentence, demoable, no "work on." ("The door sequence runs start to finish in the headset" — yes. "Work on interactions" — no.) I circulate for desk-crits all afternoon; flag me when you're blocked, and show me the running thing, not the plan. At 5:15, everyone demos against their sentence. Shipping less than you hoped is normal; discovering at 5:00 that nothing runs is a process failure we're here to train out of you.
Documentation starts now
Your final deliverables include a 2–3 minute documentation edit, and the raw material for it is your project as it improves — the blockout-to-beauty arc only exists if you capture the blockout. Sequencer is UE's cinematic timeline: cameras, cuts, and animation tracks over your live level. Movie Render Queue renders those sequences offline at quality your real-time frame budget would never allow. Set both up today, render passes weekly, and the edit assembles itself.
Epic's free MetaHuman Animator markerless plugin extracts full-body animation — fingers included — from single-camera phone video. Character performance, which used to require a mocap stage, is now a production-sprint option for your final. Discussion: what does free mocap do to the economics of indie production?
2:45 · Sprint Build against the board
Studio time, structured. The steps below are the working discipline, not a tutorial — follow them in whatever order your project demands, except step 1, which is already done, and step 8, which is non-negotiable.
- Goal on the board
One sentence, demoable at 5:15. If you can't phrase it, that's your first desk-crit.
- Break it into 45-minute tasks
Anything bigger than 45 minutes is hiding a surprise. Order tasks so the demo path works earliest — polish last, plumbing first.
- Commit before every agent session
The Week 1 rule at production tempo: clean commit before you prompt, diff review after. Under deadline pressure the temptation is to let the agent run long and trust it — deadline pressure is exactly when that costs the most.
- Take the desk-crit
When I come by, show the running build and name your riskiest unknown. Desk-crits exist to reorder your afternoon, not to grade it.
- Cut scope, not quality
If the goal slips at mid-sprint, consult your cut list from Week 12 and drop a feature whole. A smaller finished thing beats a larger broken one — that's also how the final is graded.
- Rough in the documentation sequence
Create a level sequence in Sequencer with three shots of today's state: an establishing move, a detail, and the interaction that is your sprint goal. Cine camera actors, real cuts.
- Queue a Movie Render Queue render
Set up an MRQ job for the sequence at high quality — anti-aliasing samples up, resolution at final. It can render after class; what matters is the job exists and produces frames.
- Push and log
Before demo: commit, push, AI log entry. The repo at 5:15 is the sprint's actual output; the demo is just its proof.
4:00 · AI lab Your agent, your pipeline
Twelve weeks in, the training wheels are off: no assigned exercise, just your production and your judgment about where an agent earns its keep. The one meta-assignment: notice what your best prompt of the day was, because that's the pipeline knowledge your reflection is made of.
Choose deliberately: sweeps, wiring, and boilerplate are agent territory; composition and feel are yours. Log the prompt verbatim and what came back — tonight's best prompt is a candidate for the "faster" column of your final reflection.
Let the agent do the plumbing — cameras, tracks, cuts — then take over the framing yourself. An agent can build a sequence; it cannot compose a shot you'd put in your portfolio. Scrub the result and adjust every camera by hand.
Smallest fix, stated explicitly — under deadline, agents will happily refactor half your project to fix a typo. Verify the fix in the editor, confirm nothing else changed in the diff, and only then commit.
- Your sprint-goal sentence is demoable, live, right now.
- Every agent diff from today was reviewed before it was committed — none pending.
- The documentation sequence plays three authored shots in Sequencer.
- An MRQ job exists and has produced at least test frames.
- AI log entry written, including the day's best prompt, verbatim.
5:15 · Crit / share Demo against the board
Two minutes each: read your 2:00 sentence aloud, then demo it. Shipped, partially shipped, or cut — say which and why, and name tomorrow's first task. The room offers one triage suggestion per project. Same contract next week, with playtesting on top.
Homework — due before Week 14
| Task | Deliverable |
|---|---|
| Run your second sprint goal at home — same contract, self-enforced. | Goal sentence and outcome in the repo; commits to show for it. |
| Produce a packaged build for playtesting — next week strangers play it cold, without you narrating. | Build that installs and launches on your target (headset and/or wall project). |
| Write your playtest script: what you'll ask testers to do and what you need to learn. | 3–5 task prompts + 3 questions, committed to the repo. |
Resources
- Cinematics and movie making in UE — Sequencer, cine cameras, the whole documentation toolkit.
- Movie Render Pipeline — MRQ setup and high-quality render settings.
- MetaHuman Animator markerless mocap — if your final wants a performance, this is the free path.
- Claude Code documentation — the workflows section, now that the pipeline is yours to design.