Want to learn Virtual Production? Start your education here!
Virtual Production puts real people in a CG background or adds CG characters/special effects to live video scenes. Cameras can move and the CG backgrounds can be animated. It is used in a lot of TV and Movies like Disney's "The Mandalorian" and is the fastest growing new technology for video production today. The tutorials on my youtube channel. and this repository will help you get started learning Virtual Production and Unreal Engine. Best of all, Epic games licenses Unreal Engine free for Virtual Production use! For the first time in history, literally anyone can get the same software used by major motion pictures! Use it to punch up your home videos, make YouTube content or even your own feature film!
Below is me doing a product review from a Virtual Set. The output is real-time so you can live stream to YouTube or a video conferencing app like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Only me and the desk are real, everything else is CG. You can see more examples on my youtube channel.
Active Projects In This Repository
- VPStudio -- my Virtual Production tutorial, this is the project you should use.
OBSOLETE items for reference
These are still in the repository for future reference, but YOU SHOULD NOT use them. Improved versions of all this stuff is now built-in to VPStudio.
- UE4VirtualProduction -- Is my first Virtual Production project, kept here for reference
- TrackerTest -- Some experiments at testing VIVE trackers
Getting Started
This is NOT "plug-and-play" you must customize the setup for your hardware and studio. Tutorials on my youtube channel. will help you get started. If you haven't used Unreal Engine before, watch a couple of the getting started courses on the Unreal Engine Learning Hub to get familiar with how to use it.
Everything here was done as my hobby using consumer DSLR cameras, VIVE VR gear and a gaming PC. You can get started using a webcam or smartphone camera and a laptop or scale this up to use professional studio equipment. The same software is used for everything.
You will need Unreal Engine to run these examples.
This is an EDUCATIONAL project.
I've always loved movie special effects and am doing this as a hobby to learn and have fun. Virtual Production is new technology with features coming out so quickly that official documentation can't keep up. I decided to start releasing tutorials on YouTube to help other people get started and learn along with me. Consider VPStudio is like a "workbook" to go with the tutorials, it's full of simple examples to help you learn the basics and get over the rough spots.
Other Sources of help
There is a lot of virtual production info on social media, check #virtualproduction to find the latest ones. For good help from experienced people check this discord channel and this facebook group they have to approve your membership but that's just to keep out spammers, anyone interested in Virtual Production gets in.
Some other applications
Virtual Production took on new importantance with the COVID-19 pandemic. Many TV and Movie productions stalled at first due to quaranteens. Virtual Production allows us to "teleport" people from their homes into virtual sets for making entertainment. Now films can be made with groups of actors while everyone remains safe at home. A game-show could be made where all the participants stay at home. It's also great for press conferences, product announcements, training videos and virtual trade shows.
Unreal Engine render high quality animated productions like this or this very quickly.
One person can even "perform" all the characters in a film by recording each performance separately and putting them all together!
Virtual Production is used by VTubers (virtual YouTubers) to replacing themselves with a real-time animated CG character. This became really popular in Japan several years ago with VTubers earning big money as influencers today. Check out hashtag #codemiko on twitch/youtube for a great example of this using Unreal Engine!
Free software and 3d models
Everything here is free and public domain. Use it however you wish. All the examples and tutorials come from the community and information in published documentation.
Many CG assets I in my demos come from the "free assets" section of Unreal Marketplace. The licenses on these assets don't let me distribute them here but you can get most of them by visiting the Unreal Marketplace free content section. There are a lot of permanently free sets and characters available there. Also every month they give away several pieces of great content for free, so visit the marketplace monthly and grab them, then they are yours to use forever! The Use your own sets tutorial on my channel explains how to create your own setup using the resources you make yourself, buy or get for free.
Contribute, help others and be an educator yourself!
My tutorials will help you get started, remember Virtual Production is so new that even "experts" are still learning. You may come up with the next great idea which could land you a job working on a film or TV production! Don't be afraid to get out there, talk about your ideas, put up demos and help other people get started!
If you use any of my stuff I would appreciate a credit and a link back to my channel, but you don't have to. If you send me links to any cool Virtual Production stuff of yours, I'll feature it on my channel to help you get viewers.
I'm hoping this will get enough people started in Virtual Production to increase the amount of information about it and make it easier for even more people to join in!