How to record position of HMD + controllers in-game to render HD, VR gameplay footage?

[JiNNN]

Hi all,

I am simply looking to document an artistic VR project that I am currently working on. I use SteamVR + HTC Vive.

At the moment I am screen-capturing in-game footage from the VR preview window for documentation purposes. Although this is workable - the quality is not the greatest (graphics card is rendering each eyeball for the Vive + a downgraded version for the preview window).

I would therefore like to record the in-game position of both the HMD and both Vive controller meshes. I would then like to re-render the gameplay in HD but this time without the HMD plugged in i.e so that graphics card is only rendering one view of the game like a normal UE4 desktop experience.

I would like it to appear as if the player is navigating and interacting with the environment - in HD - this is why I want to figure out how to record the in-game position of the HMD + Vive controllers = render an HD video from the VR pawn camera.

Does anyone have any advice or tips on how to go about doing this?

[Fredrum]

I have been using two methods.
One is using the Sequence Recorder to record the performing Pawns/Actors and also a custom camera actor that I can render from.
The other is to do it in realtime but using a second pc that is multiplayer connected and sporting a different camera Pawn as Player2 whose animation was defined by me to make the camera moves.

[rudydiaz18]

I am using wmr The samsung Odyssey Headset and HTC vive . When I see for example the Lab and other commercial software it looks great but my stuff looks good with objects closep but blurry from far. How can i get stuff to look as good as the lab.

Thanks

Rudy

[JiNNN]

I have been using two methods.
One is using the Sequence Recorder to record the performing Pawns/Actors and also a custom camera actor that I can render from.
The other is to do it in realtime but using a second pc that is multiplayer connected and sporting a different camera Pawn as Player2 whose animation was defined by me to make the camera moves.

Hey Fredrum,

Thanks for the info. I'm having some issues creating the custom camera actor. I managed to record my VR pawn and get a bunch of keyframes into a level sequence. When I play the sequence back the camera motion looks great i.e exactly how I would want to render it.

But I don't know how to attach the camera actor to the HMD, VR pawn sequence.

Could you be more specific regarding how you attached a camera actor to the HMD motion sequence + how you rendered out of this camera?

[Fredrum]

It's been a while since I did that so I'll have to take a look and see what I might have done.

Could you please just clarify, do you want ro render from the point of view of the eyes of your 'VR Pawn'? And you recorded that pawn being controlled by the vr player with a HMD?
If you can give me some more info at the moment I am a little confused as to what is not working and what you want?

[JiNNN]

It's been a while since I did that so I'll have to take a look and see what I might have done.

Could you please just clarify, do you want ro render from the point of view of the eyes of your 'VR Pawn'? And you recorded that pawn being controlled by the vr player with a HMD?
If you can give me some more info at the moment I am a little confused as to what is not working and what you want?

Yes. That is exactly what I wanted and I have figured it out! I can now render video out of sequencer that shows what the VR player is seeing inside the experience. This video comes from the camera that is "Locked to HMD" in the VR pawn.

Unfortunately, I also want to render video that includes the motion controllers (left and right) and I have not figured this out yet. I'm trying to follow these steps: https://answers.unrealengine.com/que...r-with-vr.html

I have two dummy objects inside my blueprint that are receiving WorldTransform locations every tick from the left and right motion controller meshes. The sequence records fine and captures the HMD movement - but the controllers either disappear or are frozen in mid air when I render a video out.

Here is a screenshot of my blueprint: https://imgur.com/a/XmxLh

Do you think this might have something to do with the fact that my controllers are not parented to my camera?