Unreal Engine 4.26 Virtual Camera

What is Virtual Camera?

Virtual Camera in Unreal Engine is a modular toolset that turns an iPad into a virtual motion-tracked window and controller of cine cameras within Unreal Engine; allowing users to see and control virtual cameras just as they would in the real world with physical cameras. This toolset is not only powerful for large film and TV productions for getting CG shots in real-time, but is also empowering indie filmmakers to partake in the budding world of virtual production using Unreal Engine.​

Using the Virtual Camera UMG UI in Unreal Engine provides users with the ability to:​

• Record camera translation & rotation to a sequence

• Take image snapshots

• Translate, rotate, & scale objects in the scene using touch

• Use a dynamic and interactable top-down map of your current scene to place and teleport to points of interest

• Playback, and even record on top of, an open sequence in sequencer

• View, playback, & scrub through all of your recent virtual camera sequences

• Modify essential camera properties such as F-Stop, Focal Length, focus distance, and focus tracking in real-time

• Modify the scaling of the motion tracked movement to move/rotate with less/more movement

• Enable and disable motion stabilization on translational and/or rotational axes

• View the streaming statistics of the Virtual Camera

• Navigate the cine camera via touch joystick controls on top of motion tracking

• Modify a number of miscellaneous variables using the settings window​

All while also having the ability to modify on top of the system due the modular nature of the UMG widget system

My Role

I worked in close coordination with another in-house UI designer at Magnopus to implement and modify UI assets for Virtual Camera created in Adobe XD as well as coordinated directly with Epic Games' Lead Designers and Product Managers to fully integrate said assets into the engine's main branch. 

On top of this I was solely responsible for implementing the entire UI system using a combination of UMG and blueprint systems that I devised. This included but was not limited to:​

• Creating a dynamic UI material that allowed for fast implementation of UI elements from Adobe XD without using textures, which includes features such as:

  • Dynamic per-corner radius​

  • Customizable gradient

    • Both radial and linear

  • ​Customizable border

    • Both uniform and non-uniform

    • ​Either fill or outline

  • Custom background texture

  • Panning background texture

  • Customize opacity

    • Using gradient or texture​

  • Progress bar mask

    • Both radial and linear​

  • Creating, organizing, and implementing assets created in Adobe XD for use in Unreal Engine as optimized textures for target devices

  • Using atomic design principles and everything that UMG and blueprints has to offer in Unreal to create a modular and robust UI system

  • Creating consistent, snappy, and predictable animations for every single UI interaction using UMG timeline animations

  • Working with engine engineers to intertwine my front-end development with custom engine functionality that was needed in order for virtual camera functionality to work as intended

Documentation

Below you'll find a link to Unreal Engine's official documentation that details everything about the Virtual Camera toolset and how to use it:  Documentation