Getting started with Unreal Live-Action Cinematics

This guide is a work in progress.

About

This guide provides an OVERVIEW of Unreal live-action cinematic video. Covered in this guide include tutorials to get familiar with Unreal, tools and hardware required, the checklist of operations, and an overview of the template project. To avoid confusion, this guide does not cover the capturing and exporting video from Unreal. Another guide will be posted.

This guide makes use of OpenXR systems but no one will be wearing the headset in a traditional sense.

Prerequisites

New to Unreal?

Checklist of items:

Order to activate equipment

OpenXR equipment is still early technology and can sometimes lose tracking, freeze, and other challenges. Keep in mind you may need to restart devices, re calibrate, and more. The good news is every year bugs, software, and hardware improves.

At the time of this writing, the following should be turned on and checked for calibration in this order, please read the FAQ below:

FAQ

Verify plugins are enabled in your project

Overview of template project

Open up the CinematicMap map. Take a moment and review all the actors in the Outliner. Before getting started, let's open a couple of tabs that may not have imported.

 
Quick fixes

Go to Window/Virtual Production/Composure Compositing and dock this window as a tab next to Outliner. You'll find there is an item called 0010_comp with three items as children. All of these are actors in our map.

Go to Window/Layers and dock this window as a tab next to Outliner and Composure.. Our Foreground layer was not saved when the project was zipped so let's recreate it. Right click in the Layer tab, create an empty layer called FGLayer. This layer will be for all the foreground objects that sit over top the green screen and background objects. You do NOT need to create a background layer.

Screenshot 2025-01-27 123032.png

Now click on the Composure... tab, click on FG, and within the Details panel, go to Composure/Input/Capture Actors/Index [0]/ and verify the ActorSet has FGLayer assigned. If not, assign the layer.

Screenshot 2025-01-27 123232.png

 

Actors overview

A demo of the following will be presented during your class.

The following are the actors in the outliner along with their purpose.

 
Setup

If everything is running properly, go to Window/Virtual Production/Live Link. Click the button + Add Source and choose LiveLinkXR Source and check all the boxes. You should see your HMD, two controllers, and most importantly, the Vive Tracker. If not, close the editor and ensure everything is working. If you see the tracker, close this window.

Click on CineCameraActor. In the Details panel, scroll down in the components window (it's tiny) and choose LiveLinkComponentController (screenshot below). Under Live Link in the Details panel, make sure to assign the tracker under Subject Representation.

Screenshot 2025-01-27 124748.png

 

Now we need to get the DSLR feed. Ensure the DSLR is turned on.

Open the Content Drawer, go to Movies/NewMediaPlayer and open it up. In the top left of the video preview is a tiny folder icon, just below the Save icon. Select it, choose Video, and choose the DSLR camera. If you can see the video feed, you can MINIMIZE this window.

DO NOT CLOSE the NewMediaPlayer window after you open the video feed or you will "close" the video feed!

Screenshot 2025-01-27 124930.png

 

From here, select the actor 0010_comp and verify everything is working, including tracker, camera feed, etc.

 

Where to go from here?

The next steps would be to prepare both the studio and the Unreal world for cinematic capture. This takes time and planning, particularly with lighting, perspective, and positioning of both real-life and CGI objects. Consider recording a few tests and making a composite before officially recording your takes. Another guide will be posted on an overview on capturing within the Unreal environment and exporting the footage.


Revision #6
Created 17 January 2025 14:57:54 by Wes
Updated 31 January 2025 17:26:10 by Wes