Vessel (Working Title)
Description
Vessel is a short film project, which started at our university in September 2021. I was part of the initial team during the concepting process, helping form the vision and prototyping tools to be used later on in the production stage of development. I needed access to all of the tech (trackers, cameras, lighting) in order work on the tools required, which wasn’t possible online. I tried finding workarounds just to get a taste of what virtual productions feel like and develop skills for when I do get to work with such technology. As you will see from my work shared bellow, I learned a lot about the overall workflow and the film industry in general. I am still very interested in this exciting new field and would gladly work at a similar position in the industry.
Project Details
Tech and Tools: UE4 / Blueprints (Moving to UE5)
Development Time: Ongoing (26 Working Weeks planned)
Platforms Supported: N/A
Available on: Not Published (WIP)
Team Size: 7
My Role(s): Tools Programmer / Concept Designer
My Contributions
Virtual Camera Testing
Because I didn’t have access to the school’s Vive trackers (since I was working remotely), but still wanted to experiment with Unreal’s Virtual Camera actor, I bought an iPad Air 4 and installed the LiveLink VCAM app from Epic Games. It is available only on iOS/iPadOS and supports devices with the A13 bionic chipset or higher. It let’s you connect your iPad to Unreal Engine over a local network and use it as a tracker and viewport for a Virtual Camera actor in the scene. After a lot of experimenting I managed to set it up - there was very little documentation on troubleshooting problems. The video on the left shows a recording from the desktop view and down below is an iPad view.
I wouldn’t say this a usable tool for any type of real-world production to be honest, but the setup is very similar for all kinds of trackers, so it was a worthwhile learning experience.
After I played around with the resolution settings a bit, loaded up a simpler scene and connected my laptop via a LAN cable, I managed to get a much smoother connection. See video bellow.
Scene Composition Tools
Made a simple UE4 tool that lets you move any selected scene object (Actor) using a controller, save its location/rotation and then use it in editor to set it back to that position. It will also let you switch between the view of all cameras in the scene. The idea was to be able to position the rotating ship we had precisely for a shot and see how it will look from different angles. It is intended to be used on stage, while the scene is being displayed on the LED wall, so you don’t have to run back to the computer running Unreal Engine just to make a small change. Additionally, the joystick and the bigger screen allow for a very precise positioning and lets you see exactly how a shot will look with all the props on stage, if there are any.
Research on Virtual Production
Additionally, I have done research on the typical workflow and practices in virtual productions and the tech and tools used. Both of my note documents are linked bellow. This has helped me tremendously to understand the general idea behind the VP approach, where it is coming from, why it is used and how the environment is set up.
I always like to have a high level overview of what I am working on before diving deeper into specific topics or details.
