Render camera that you are not viewing ?

General Feedback & Requests
1

I am new here, this might be a simple question
Is there any way to render a cam that you are not viewing and see the recording later, or get the data from the camera, stream data from a camera that you are not viewing?
Like a security cam, it just sits there and films and sends feed somewhere and records for data manipulation or viewing it later ?

So it’s just like a security cam that films and sends data somewhere without me looking from the perspective of the camera, I want to have many such cams sitting in the background and taking data feed as the game rolls

2

Yes you can. Check out the Blueprint Example Project from Epic.

3

I can do that make cams that project on monitors but while you are not looking at the monitor is the data still recorded, while you are not in view of the monitor.
Maybe it calls into action while you are looking and then it no longer records data if you don’t view it in the view port.

Maybe it renders the data and you could save data while it is called into function, then when you are not viewing and the image is not rendered on screen it no longer records ?

So I want it to record data regardless if I have it in my view or not, let’s say there is another security cam in another room and I’m not there, but the data is still recording processing.

What I want is to put cameras on game characters and they walk around and record data that get sent to an array, small data, their view is small for them so it does not cost PC resources.

You got a computer game character walking around with a head cam and as he moves around he records data, so not for me to record but for them.
It’s okay while they are on my view, I’ll be happy with that if it does not work in another way, if I see a character then he starts recording data but without me looking on what he sees.

He sort of has a camera and a monitor okay, attached to him and the monitor is sort of only for him and the data from the monitor that is actually the pixels on a render target gets put away in some array and like him are others who do the same. It’s okay if I don’t see him if it can’t be done, but at least if he is in my view he starts recording data.

He records data, data gets sent to an array and shapes his behaviour based on what he sees. I would prefer if they do it while I don’t see them like in sims, people are at a specific location without you seeing them, doing their thing, games like sims or sim city, where a given character is found at a location going about his business, but only now he records temporary data into an array. If if can’t be done then at least when I have the human character in my sight.

We can make an educational game with characters that actually behave based on what they see around them and not on Id tags or mechanical functions.

For this you have to make their camera read pixels that they see and store them inside an array that constantly changes as they walk around.
For this purpose I have thought of a way not to be costly maybe a capsized view black and white they see, image reduced in resolution, to store data faster to array, if it’s capsized 128X128 for example the pixels can be clear but because it’s cap sized it has a small view 128 rows with 128 columns in an array so the array can process data faster.

We can even make instances of arrays and cast different portions of images in different arrays at once to process the data faster and then glue the picture like a screen made out of many tv’s like you see in electronic shops where they sell tv’s, one tv on top of the other to form one picture, these tv’s are actually the arrays.

in 1 tv I have a row in the other the next row and so on, data gets instantly casted in all the rows.

We then can make resonable resolution maybe 640x480 so the image can be more clear for data image process.

4

Problem for me if you or anyone could help is how to get data inside of array, actually read the pixels off the render target and send it to an RBG 2darray as pixel data on rows sort of this:

123, 343, 234, 234.
343, 368, 356, 234
234, 234, 645, 732.

And so on, the problem is I can’t find any documentation on this for Unreal.

This is just stored pixel data on rows and columns, or maybe just black and white numbers of array if it’s better.

What kind of array does this in unreal ?

5

I can do this in other game engine, like you are viewing some other place and then there is a cam okay in the background that take an image of an object where the cam is placed you are in one room and the cam and object being captured on camera is in another so you are in complete other location, but the problem with blender game upbge engine is you have to save it to a jpg first and then load it back from disk and then load it to an array, that is very consuming on pc resources.

So it’s possible, like you are in one room and the camera say is in another but the cam still takes picture without you viewing the object that it is taking picture of nor are you looking at any monitor, the picture still gets saved to disk.

My problem is now finding a way in unreal for the camera to do that and grab the pixels without saving to file as an image but sending it directly to an array