#CREATE 360 PANORAMA VIDEO VR HOW TO#
#CREATE 360 PANORAMA VIDEO VR FULL#

#CREATE 360 PANORAMA VIDEO VR FULL#

Maintain full control of what the client can view by specifying the exact position of the panoramas, thus allowing you to better tell your design story.

#CREATE 360 PANORAMA VIDEO VR HOW TO#

This could also be applied in creating stereoscopic panoramas by appropriately shifting the camera direction for each eye.Ĭreating panoramas in Unreal can be difficult at first, but we’ve embedded two in-depth videos to show you how to make a flat panorama in the engine via The Chairs and Table project, a well-recognised tutorial for learning Unreal.įind out how to create 360° panoramas with our ray tracing technology below. Of course, not only do you get a 360° image or video in one easy step, but you also get physically correct reflections, refractions and shadows. Using a lens shader, which applies a spherical projection establishing the camera direction for each pixel, we can create a complete 360° flat panorama image. With Imagination’s implementation of ray tracing in the Unreal Engine the panoramas are created in one single render. This could also be applied in creating stereoscopic panoramas by appropriately shifting the camera direction for each eye. Of course, not only do you get a 360° image or video in one easy step, you also get physically correct reflections, refractions and shadows.

A detailed description of the process using render “slices” can be found on the Unreal Engine blog. This method is more accurate but can be very time consuming depending on the required final resolution of the panorama. You then stitch each panel together to create the 360° panorama.

Render many sub panels of the full 360° by rotating a camera with a fixed field of view in a central location.

An interesting discussion on this method can be found on the Unreal Engine answerhub. This method is fast but can result in stretching artefacts at the cube corners. The cubemap image is then converted to an equirectangular spherical 360° panorama with some well-defined projection methods essentially, projecting or shrink wrapping the cube onto a sphere.

Render six sides of a cube into a cubemap by rotating a 90° field of view camera in a central location of the scene.

Due to the limitations of a rasterizer, there are currently two ways to create 360° panorama stills or video sequences with the Unreal Engine: The difference between a rasterizer and a ray tracer is that with the former the geometry dictates which screen pixel is affected, but with the latter, the pixel decides which geometry affects its colour. The Unreal Engine is considered to be a rasterizer. But why is creating these panoramas so much easier with ray tracing?

This post is about creating 360° animated panoramas the easy way using the Unreal Engine and Imagination’s Wizard GR6500 ray tracing hardware. So that’s a long preamble to this without the words ray tracing. The possible applications range from computer-generated animated feature films to architectural fly-by renderings of yet to be built structures. However, in both cases panoramas add much entertainment value by giving each viewer the potential for a unique experience. Stereoscopic panoramas do provide some depth perception but must be viewed with a VR headset. Monoscopic panoramas provide no depth information. They should not be confused with 3D content shown on theatrical screenings or 3D capable televisions, which are viewed with special glasses. Some also refer to 360° videos as 3D since you can look all around, either by spinning the sphere or moving a mobile device. The ambiguity is compounded as VR headsets are the optimal way of viewing these 360° videos. However, with live action panoramas you are a passive viewer rather than an interactive participant. Virtual reality (VR) is currently described as a computer-generated world with some level of interactivity. They are often labeled as 3D or VR but it’s not really accurate. These panoramas are actually two 360×180 equirectangular 2D images stitched together and projected onto a conceptual 3D sphere.

What I’m referring to are mostly live action movies shot with a growing list of 360° video capable cameras. Even without a VR headset they offer a uniquely immersive experience. 360° VR panorama videos have been trending on YouTube since the viewing feature was introduced in 2015.

Create 360 panorama video vr