Can you import camera track data from Max or other 3D software?

Development Cinematics & Media
,
1

Hey guys, total N00b here, I’m looking at using the Unreal Engine to generate backgrounds in real time for things like music videos… This is because it seems really quick and intuitive to use to get impressive lighting and detailed set pieces without the extreme render times and fiddly workflow of Maya and Max. I would be looking at filming the talent on green screen with a moving camera and Keying out a foreground plate, tracking the camera movement using SynthEyes or AEs built in 3D tracker or something similar then placing the plate over exported UE4 video.

The trick is going to be matchmoving the real world camera with the ‘in game’ one so that the foreground and background lock up with the handheld footage. This really helps sell the effect and moving camera shots deceive the eye making the whole scene look more realistic. Then after some After Effects compositing magic and post re-lighting, I should end up with a solid shot.

My question is, is there any function in the engine for importing external 3D camera track data? If so what data format?

Thanks guys. I could be completely missing something here, but I can’t see why this couldn’t be a great new use for this extremely powerful app.

Any info would be appreciated!

Regards

2

Sure you can. Export your camera track from Max as FBX, then open up Matinee in UE4 go to File > Import, and import your camera animation.

3

Thanks Jacky! That’s exactly what I needed. Now on to hours and hours of tutorials to figure this software out. LOL!

4

But this method doesn’t work, camera imports flipped and in a wrong world space in UE4 for some reason. And it’s not fixed in 4.11.1
There is no proper way to import a 3ds max camera in UE4 so far, it’s all broken.

5

You know matinee is being replaced with sequencer it might be a good idea to look into that instead.

6

In 3ds Max mount your camera to a helper/dolly object and animate the helper to create the tracking shot. Select the helper/dolly and > export selected to FBX. In the FBX exporter dialogue check bake animations and match the number of frames to be exported to the number of frames in the animation. In UE4 import the dolly along with the baked animations and link a UE4 camera to the dolly.

The camera will now follow along with the camera dolly and the camera can be referenced in Matinee.

7

I found another way. Use Unreal Engine 4 - Camera Animation Exporter script from here.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/unreal-engine-4-camera-animation-exporter
It’s going to move the baked camera in a different spot, but that’s ok, don’t worry. Just export it as fbx, don’t forget to check “animation”, “cameras” and “Z-axis up”. If you do it all right it’s going to import perfectly.