Stereo Panoramic Player

[UNAmedia]

I am not a developer and have to use freelancers to complete much of the work I do so forgive me for basic questions. The page on the marketplace says that it can record 360 images. I want to make a 360 video of different scenes. I have done this before with my animation software but not with unreal engine but I want to use Unreal Engine.

Can your plugin record a series of images that can be put together in a 360 video? If so I am not sure I have a big enough video card to make it work. Do you have any recommendation or a place I can rent a virtual machine that has a good graphics card?

Lastly do you have a list of people that use your plugin that I can pay as a freelancer to help me with this? Thanks

Hi! I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but the plugin does not record any video or image. The word "rendering" was intended "on screen", in a real-time context. We'll change it to avoid any confusion.

Anyway, to record 360 videos, you can try few possible solutions already included in UE4: the Panoramic Capture Tool (that seems to be the preferred option) or the NVIDIA Ansel Plugin.

[Airwaves]

I am not a developer and have to use freelancers to complete much of the work I do so forgive me for basic questions. The page on the marketplace says that it can record 360 images. I want to make a 360 video of different scenes. I have done this before with my animation software but not with unreal engine but I want to use Unreal Engine.

Can your plugin record a series of images that can be put together in a 360 video? If so I am not sure I have a big enough video card to make it work. Do you have any recommendation or a place I can rent a virtual machine that has a good graphics card?

Lastly do you have a list of people that use your plugin that I can pay as a freelancer to help me with this? Thanks

[UNAmedia]

Hi everyone! We just submitted the version for UE4.25, it should be reviewed by Epic in few days.

[UNAmedia]

Hi! Replies inline below.

1. How can I show a crosshair? I used the panoramic pawn and the panoramic director but there is no crosshair shown.

You can use the standard HUD of UE4. Here you can find the source code of a demo using the plugin, where a crosshair is implemented (file Blueprints/SimpleHUD). Your custom HUD class must then be set in your Game Mode.

2. Is it possible to show infopoints out of the box with panoramic director?

At the moment, the only option to add custom Widgets that the user can interact with, is following the same approach we discussed in the previous messages (i.e. manually creating the UPanoramicWidgetComponents and querying for them at run-time). But, right now we are working on a new version of the plugin that will add just this option to the Director. The new version will support adding custom Widgets directly to the Panoramic Stage of the Director, each with customizable actions. Some of the pre-made widgets/actions available out-of-the-box will include: a movie player, an image viewer, support for audio playbacks, etc. I don't have an ETA for its release at the moment.

3. I am developing for android (pico g2 4k device) but the movie is very pixelated on the device. in windows preview everything is normal. also on the vr headset the video is not pixaleted if I view over a normal player app. What can I do show the video normal on the pico through the panoramic player?

The plugin doesn't change the assets or textures it's using, it uses the textures and assets as "provided" by UE4. So I suspect that in your device, UE4 reduces the size of the target textures (or decodes the video at a lower resolution). A simple test would be to render the Media Texture used with the plugin directly to a simple big plane in your scene, you'll see the same artifacts (of course inside a 360 sphere the artifacts could be more evident). On some configurations, UE4 forces the textures to be square and Power-Of-Two, this could reduce a lot the effective surface area available for the image/video. Usually this is logged during the Cooking process.

[heimspiel]

Hi again.

I have also some other questions.

1. How can I show a crosshair? I used the panoramic pawn and the panoramic director but there is no crosshair shown.

2. Is it possible to show infopoints out of the box with panoramic director?

3. I am developing for android (pico g2 4k device) but the movie is very pixelated on the device. in windows preview everything is normal. also on the vr headset the video is not pixaleted if I view over a normal player app. What can I do show the video normal on the pico through the panoramic player?

[UNAmedia]

Hi,
did not get it to work. If I print string from foward vector of getControlRotaion the coords change if I rotate, but like I said the trace never returned true.The getActorRotation seems to be dead, no coord changes when rotating.

Here is the project:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iPq...ew?usp=sharing
The setup is in level blueprint

Unfortunately it seems there's something wrong on our side, we'll look at it in the next days. Sorry. In the mean time here's a workaround (tested with your project) based on LineTraceForObjects(): https://blueprintue.com/blueprint/z9ao367d/
Please note that you must set the "IgnoreSelf" parameter to false. Depending on your final setup, you could need to use MultiLineTraceForObjects().

[heimspiel]

Hi,
did not get it to work. If I print string from foward vector of getControlRotaion the coords change if I rotate, but like I said the trace never returned true.The getActorRotation seems to be dead, no coord changes when rotating.

Here is the project:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1iPq...ew?usp=sharing
The setup is in level blueprint

[UNAmedia]

Hi, I am testing with UE 4.24. Everything works so far, but not the TracePanoramicWidget BP node.
I setup everything like described in the HowTo: https://www.unamedia.com/ue4-stereo-...custIntWidgets
Then, from the TracePanoramicWidget node output I put a branch and connected it to the return value, but I never get the True condition, it's always False.
I am using also the PanoramicPawn.

Hi! Sometime the problem is with the "WorldDir" param. Just to verify you're passing the right value, print on screen the input vector attached to "WorldDir", to check it's effectively pointing where you're looking at (e.g. that it changes value while you're looking around). Depending on how you setup your project, you could need to pass the PlayerPawn's actor rotation (GetAxctorRotation method) or its control rotation (as shown in the HowTo).

Let me know if this helps fixing your problem.

[heimspiel]

Hi, I am testing with UE 4.24. Everything works so far, but not the TracePanoramicWidget BP node.
I setup everything like described in the HowTo: https://www.unamedia.com/ue4-stereo-...custIntWidgets
Then, from the TracePanoramicWidget node output I put a branch and connected it to the return value, but I never get the True condition, it's always False.
I am using also the PanoramicPawn.

[UNAmedia]

Hi! Epic has been super-efficient, and the update is already available!

To upgrade: open the Epic Games Launcher > Unreal Engine > Library, under the UE4.24 launch icon you should see an exclamation mark near the "Installed Plugins" label (if not, restart the Launcher). Click the label, then the Update button near the Stereo Panoramic Plugin icon.

Version 1.1.0 changes (UE4.24-only):

• Added support for a new Opaque rendering mode: is more efficient to render (especially on low-end mobile devices) but objects in the surrounding 3D scene that overlap the panoramic sphere will appear inside. This mode supports rendering custom 3D meshes inside the panoramic sphere out-of-the-box. See 'Blend mode' for more details.
• Refactored the plugin materials, using now UE4 Instanced Materials, to simplify end-user customizations.
• UPanoramicBlueprintFunctionLibrary::TracePanoramicWidget() can now be used to trace widget components created with UPanoramicBlueprintFunctionLibrary::NewPanoramicWidget(). This simplifies detecting interactions with custom UMG widgets in a APanoramicSphere actor.

The new Opaque rendering mode is very helpful if you want to show 3D meshes inside the panoramic sphere (here more details), or if you don't have any surrounding 3D scene and want maximum performances (e.g. on Mobile platforms). If you need to support generic surrounding 3D scenes, then you should continue using the standard rendering mode.

We added detailed documentation on How to render 3D objects inside the Panoramic Sphere when using the standard rendering mode.

We added detailed documentation on How to manage custom interactive UMG widgets.

We hope this update will help with your work.

[UNAmedia]

Hi everyone! We submitted the new Version 1.1.0 to Epic for review. Following your requests, we added a new rendering mode (it's more efficient to render and supports out-of-the-box the rendering of 3D meshes inside the sphere) and a simplified management of custom UMG hotspots. The new version is backward compatible, so you should be able to update without any major issue. More details in the next days.

[UNAmedia]

Hi again!

As im finalizing development of my application, I noticed that the Stereo Panoramic Player doesnt 'unload' the videos from previous stages and keeps them in memory. Im only using 4 videos, but since its running on an Oculus go, it cant keep 150MB of videos loaded into the ram at all times. The third video only plays the audio, because it cant load it in anymore. Is there a way to unload videos after going to the next scene?

Thanks!

Kind regards

Hi! If you're using the APanoramicDirector class, then you can use the OnStageChanged delegate to be notified when the active stage changes. From there you can unload any previously played video.

In alternative (e.g. if you are using the low-level APanoramicSphere class) you can use the delegates from the used UE4 UMediaPlayer class (e.g. OnEndReached or OnMediaOpened).

Bests.

[RobbeVlaeminck]

Hi again!

As im finalizing development of my application, I noticed that the Stereo Panoramic Player doesnt 'unload' the videos from previous stages and keeps them in memory. Im only using 4 videos, but since its running on an Oculus go, it cant keep 150MB of videos loaded into the ram at all times. The third video only plays the audio, because it cant load it in anymore. Is there a way to unload videos after going to the next scene?

Thanks!

Kind regards

[UNAmedia]

Hi,

Thanks again for the quick response. Changing the stereomaterials to opaque instead of translucent solved my issue. Thanks a lot!

Thanks for the update!
All this complex setup with translucent materials is needed because if the 3D scene contains translucent objects, they pop-in in the panoramic sphere (due to how the deferred rendering pipeline renders translucent objects). Without translucent objects, everything is simpler.

[RobbeVlaeminck]

Hi,

Thanks again for the quick response. Changing the stereomaterials to opaque instead of translucent solved my issue. Thanks a lot!