Looking for what's possible...

Development Programming & Scripting Blueprint
1

Apologies for the vagueness of the thread title!

Basically, I am an Arch Viz artist. I generally use sketchup/max/vray but am branching out into VR using UE4 for a big project I have on at the moment.

I have become pretty comfortable with the creation of spaces and utilising blueprints to do various things (open doors, change materials etc) and am able to create some very cool spaces.

I have been asked however about the “capability” of the software as a sales tool in a marketing suite.

I have to create a system where a salesperson can give a client a VR tour of their prospective property (easy enough).

What I would like to integrate into the “game” is the following:

A hotkey screen capture The ability for the sales person to hit the letter “P” for example and a hi res screencapture is saved into a preset folder (with minimal disruption to the user)

A hotkey movie creation The ability for the sales person to hit the letter “m” for example and a preset matinee or sequence outputs a video of the space (important:INCLUSIVE of any material changes the client made in the VR). I imagine this would be done after the client has stopped using the VR but thats fine.

Graphic Level Selector I’d like to create a graphic UI that will allow the user to select the “Level” (apartment in this instance) that they will be entering. For example, in VR, they will see a scale model of the building or plan before them, looking at each apartment from the outside of the building will “light them up”, clicking (or pressing the oculus button) will then take them into the corresponding level (apartment). On this point- would it be better to keep each apartment as a separate game (therefore meaning there is no ability to move directly between apartments via this menu), or is a multilevel solution better?

This all has to be fool proof- the people operating the system will have basic training (by me) on how to open the UE4 file and operate the occulus rift. They will have no engine or modelling experience (so no suggestions on typing code on the console etc please), its got to be as easy as “Press this key and X happens”

I’m aware that much of this may have been covered in other areas, and so I apologise if I’m asking an easily found question.

I dont need solutions on this thread, unless you are feeling generous with your time or have a handily saved tutorial, I just need to know if its possible- before I commit myself to delivering something that I realise 3 months from now is ridiculous!

Thanks in advance!

Jim

2

Screen capture is possible, basically anything you can call from the console is possible either by a shortcut key, or a on screen menu button of sorts. In blueprints there is a node to call console commands. Don’t know if you can change the save location but by default it should go to the game’s save folder into a screenshots folder I think, if I remember correctly. That’s easily tested though.

Movies, I can’t comment on too much. I know stuff like what you want to do is possible, but to what extent I’m not sure. Never really dealt with movie capture. Also from what I know, you may have post work for movies, meaning possibly compression… or whatever. BUT, again, I have no experience there to draw from.

As for a level selector, you it sure is possible what you want to do. Since you can load a level easily from a blueprint, your main work will go into the “gaze” function. Looking at an area sets up the correct level to load. Very doable. Probably a few ways to do this. Personally I’d probably trace out from the headset looking for trigger box or sphere or whatever, depending on which one gets hit you trigger a light or however you want to light up that apartment and of course when you press the button it loads that level.

Making things fool proof is purely up to you. How robust you make your interaction systems. Make sure nothing can go wrong, basically… :slight_smile: I don’t know how to explain that. It’s something you need to test and see. Just keep things simple, clean and clear and make sure there’s no chance of events overlapping… etc.

Since there’s unknowns for you, I’d suggest you test things out in a simple scene. Test out how screen capture works, video capture… etc. Those to my mind seems like the problem areas. If you can’t get that to satisfaction, then the rest probably don’t matter. But I know the level selection can be fairly easily done.