Ideas needed for possible in-game recording options

Development Programming & Scripting C++
1

Working on a game where i need to record designated camera views(1 or more) into respective video files/ image sequence. The camera wont necessarily be the gameplay cam. Ive already managed to do it in the editor using [DeveloperTools->MediaCapture and FileMediaOutput] to preview our hardware constraints for the recording. But I’m looking for a more in game solution that can be kept after packaging.

I have tried using MovieSceneCapture | Unreal Engine Documentation
from code. But it crashes on calling initialise()

if (GEngine->GameViewport && GEngine->GameViewport->GetGameViewportWidget())
{
	scene_viewport = MakeShareable(new FSceneViewport(GEngine->GameViewport, GEngine->GameViewport->GetGameViewportWidget()));
	GEngine->AddOnScreenDebugMessage(-1, 5.f, FColor::Green, TEXT("SceneViewport Set"));
}
else
{
	GEngine->AddOnScreenDebugMessage(-1, 5.f, FColor::Red, TEXT("Failed Setting SceneViewport"));
}

if (GEngine)
{
	MSC->Initialize(scene_viewport, GPlayInEditorID);
	MSC->StartWarmup();
}

Any ideas outside of the above module is also welcome :slight_smile:

Posting here cause having issues logging into answerhub

2

I cannot help you directly, but you essentially just need to figure out how to write to a texture. And then create a texture of every frame the camera sees. Browsing the docs I found this: Render to Texture Toolset Setup | Unreal Engine Documentation

Sorry I couldn’t be more specific.

(Also I am sure there are better ways. But I have implemented something similar to this in Unity C# before and it worked well)

3

I haven’t yet looked into recording in game footage options, but after seeing this thread you have peaked my interests :upside_down_face:

I will be diving into this as much as I can, because its a really powerful feature to have.

After a quick search, it seems that Unreal already has a pretty intuitive replay/ recording system. I’m taking a look at this Replay System Tutorial. It looks promising.

4

Thank you for the fast the replies.

I had initially done a render to texture using a camera view and saving it on every tick. But this was without the toolset you have mentioned. My method would basically freeze the gameplay fps to almost 1. I will try out your recommendation and update here.

Hey thanks for this one, we currently already have a recorder and playback system similar to this in the project, but the replay section broke during a version change. Maybe I can use this to go through it and figure out what needs changing. Will update when Ive tried it out. Thank you.

5

I started to take a look at the engine code for UMoveSceneCampture. Honestly, this seems like the perfect solution to what you want to achieve.

Do you have a copy of the stack trace, logs, more info when Initialize fails?

6

Honestly this is the point where my inexperience fails me. My work in debugging UE project code so far has been during project building in vs.

I know there is options for displaying the call stack during a crash, but I don’t think I have it enabled.

All I had on the UE console during the crash was the file name and line number where I called initialise.

Open to suggestions on this obviously.

And that is the exact reason I chose this module. Ill be back on this tomorrow, will try to setup the stack trace and post it here. Thank you.

7

I’m going to play around with it today and let you know if I find any success.

8

I was able to get the UMovieSceneCapture working on my end, so I believe I should be able to help you figure out what’s going wrong on your end.

With just the information that you provided that UMovieSceneCapture::Initialize is causing the project to crash, I would guess that the problem is that scene_vieport is null and you’re passing that into Initialize.

Here is a function I am calling in an actor component class I created that gets created in my player controller class. I’m calling InitializeSceneCapture in UMyActorComponent::BeginPlay.

void UMyActorComponent::InitializeSceneCapture()
{
    const UWorld* World = this->GetWorld();

    if (!World)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: World was invalid"));

        return;
    }

    UGameViewportClient* GameViewportClient = World->GetGameViewport();

    if (!GameViewportClient)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to get GameViewport"));

        return;
    }

    TSharedPtr<SViewport> GameViewportWidget = GameViewportClient->GetGameViewportWidget();

    if (!GameViewportWidget)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to get GameViewport widget"));

        return;
    }

    TSharedPtr<FSceneViewport> SceneViewportPtr = MakeShareable(new FSceneViewport(GameViewportClient, GameViewportWidget));

    if (!SceneViewportPtr)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to create pointer to TSharedPtr<FSceneViewport>"));

        return;
    }

    if (!this->MovieSceneCapture)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: MovieSceneCapture was invalid"));

        return;
    }

    this->InitializeSceneCaptureSettings();

    this->MovieSceneCapture->Initialize(SceneViewportPtr, 0);
    this->MovieSceneCapture->StartWarmup();
    this->MovieSceneCapture->StartCapture();
}

This is working for me, so I think

scene_viewport here is most likely null and that’s causing UMovieSceneCapture::Initialize to crash.

1 Like
9

Hey thanks for working on this today, yes it could be that the viewport ptr is null, but I do have it within if statements to check whether it can be created. Ill go back in tomorrow and try it out again.

Will update when I get something, also did it make a difference when u gave PIEID as 0 vs GPlayInEditorID? I had tried it with 1 and the GPlayInEditorID

@sambyte61 could you let me know what did you set in this function? As far as i understood, initialise itself would set everything.

10 
#include "MyActorComponent.h"

UMyActorComponent::UMyActorComponent()
{
    this->MovieSceneCapture = CreateDefaultSubobject<UMovieSceneCapture>("MovieSceneCapture");

    if (!this->MovieSceneCapture)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Fatal, TEXT("UMyActorComponent: MovieSceneCapture failed to be created"));
    }

    this->MovieSceneCapture->bUseSeparateProcess = true;

}

void UMyActorComponent::BeginPlay()
{
    Super::BeginPlay();

    this->InitializeSceneCapture();
}

void UMyActorComponent::EndPlay(const EEndPlayReason::Type EndPlayReason)
{
    if (this->MovieSceneCapture)
    {
        this->MovieSceneCapture->Finalize();
    }
    else
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("EndPlay: MovieSceneCapture was invalid"));
    }

    Super::EndPlay(EndPlayReason);
}

void UMyActorComponent::InitializeSceneCaptureSettings()
{
    APlayerController* PlayerController = Cast<APlayerController>(this->GetOwner());

    if (!PlayerController)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCaptureSettings: Could not cast owner's controller to APlayerController"));

        return;
    }

    int32 ViewportSizeX = 0;
    int32 ViewportSizeY = 0;

    PlayerController->GetViewportSize(ViewportSizeX, ViewportSizeY);

    if (!this->MovieSceneCapture)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCaptureSettings: MovieSceneCapture was invalid"));

        return;
    }

    const TSharedPtr<IPlugin> Plugin = IPluginManager::Get().FindPlugin("MyPlugin");

    if (!Plugin)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCaptureSettings: Could not find plugin"));

        return;
    }

    FDirectoryPath PluginDirectoryPath = FDirectoryPath();
    PluginDirectoryPath.Path           = Plugin->GetContentDir();

    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.OutputDirectory          = PluginDirectoryPath;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bOverwriteExisting       = false;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bUseRelativeFrameNumbers = false;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.HandleFrames             = 60;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bEnableTextureStreaming  = true;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.Resolution               = FCaptureResolution(ViewportSizeX, ViewportSizeY);
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bAllowMovement           = true;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bAllowTurning            = true;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bShowPlayer              = true;
    this->MovieSceneCapture->Settings.bShowHUD                 = true;
}

void UMyActorComponent::InitializeSceneCapture()
{
    const UWorld* World = this->GetWorld();

    if (!World)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: World was invalid"));

        return;
    }

    UGameViewportClient* GameViewportClient = World->GetGameViewport();

    if (!GameViewportClient)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to get GameViewport"));

        return;
    }

    TSharedPtr<SViewport> GameViewportWidget = GameViewportClient->GetGameViewportWidget();

    if (!GameViewportWidget)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to get GameViewport widget"));

        return;
    }

    TSharedPtr<FSceneViewport> SceneViewportPtr = MakeShareable(new FSceneViewport(GameViewportClient, GameViewportWidget));

    if (!SceneViewportPtr)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: Unable to create pointer to TSharedPtr<FSceneViewport>"));

        return;
    }

    if (!this->MovieSceneCapture)
    {
        UE_LOG(LogMyActorComponent, Error, TEXT("InitializeSceneCapture: MovieSceneCapture was invalid"));

        return;
    }

    this->InitializeSceneCaptureSettings();

    this->MovieSceneCapture->Initialize(SceneViewportPtr, 0);
    this->MovieSceneCapture->StartWarmup();
    this->MovieSceneCapture->StartCapture();
}
1 Like