Type or Client: School project
Development time: One month with 4 teammates
Target: Virtual production sets
Technologies used: Unity3D HDRP (C#, ProBuilder, Recorder, SteamVR), Blender
Virtual Production is growing incredibly fast these days in the cinematography domain. This technic allows directors to have more freedom while recording and creating movies. Also, this technology can be used in TV sets or live sets for instance.
This fascinating domain is still new ( and has been popularized with The Mandalorian and its giant LED screen )
Unreal engine is the main engine used for virtual production, but we personally thought Unity3D had a lot of potential for this case of use. That’s why we wanted to develop a set of tools that helps to create live videos or pre-production shots.
Our first task was to do some research about the most used functionalities for virtual production sets, and see how we can facilitate the use of these technics in a software that has never been used that way.
Secondly, we developed a personalized editor inside Unity to group everything we did inside it and make it easier for our users. Then, we developed as many functionalities as we could within our deadline.
For instance, we made a tripod system, a camera system (with or without stabilization), a mixed reality system (with a green screen), …
My tasks were to develop everything and make sure it all works together. I also did a few Unity3D lessons for my teammates and helped with finding and fixing bugs. There was (and still is) a lot of optimization to do so our tool doesn’t affect much the engine, so the project result.
Our goal is to make as many tools as possible to facilitate virtual production sets. We also wanted to make VPTK ( Virtual Production Toolkit) as versatile as possible, so everyone from big production sets to very-indie setups like ours can use it.
As of now, this project was just a one-month project. However, as we worked on it, a few people found it and liked or starred the project on GitHub. Then, I might keep working on it to make it better and maybe one day to make it the reference for Unity3D Virtual production tools.
