[RELEASED] VR Panorama - render 360 stereo videos

Hey OliVR,

Am an still having the same problem with version Unity 5.1.2f1 (64-bit). Do you have any idea what this problem could be? Should I try an earlier version of Unity?

elhongo

 

No, I think that's not a problem of Unity version (latest Vr Panorama works with all versions, and was tested). But I don't have any clue what is this bug. Did you try with a fresh project?

 

Fixed it. It took me all morning. I ended up resetting my window´s layout to default and it worked. Kind of weird.
Hope this helps anyone in the future. I´m exited to get working on some panorama videos. Best regards.

elhongo

 

Looks like a bug on a Unity side. Strange. Good that you've found a solution - for me it would be impossible to guess what was going on.

 

Hey so I went and removed everything to do with the Plugin from Unity and reimported it and the issue was resolved, I guess there was some kind of problem with the initial import, which is to do with Unity rather than your plugin. Cheers for your time.

 

When I click play, it begins to render. How can I move the camera or the character to record (Just like as shown on the demo videos)?

how to move the camera ou personage, like shown:

 

You have to use unity animation and animator and create your movement.

 

Hey there,

Just purchased the asset and it seems to work great, but the fog isn't working. So I'm talking about the distance fog in the lighting window.

I'm using Unity5.1.2f1.

 

Hi,
VR Panorama defaults to Deferred rendring path (because this gives a better quality and greater speed - overall). For this reason, you have to add GlobalFog image effect component to your camera (as fog isn't rendered by default in Deferred rendering)

Also, be sure to check "Use radial Distance" as this will give you a correct fog shading in VR applications.

 

I´m using Unity 5.2.2p4, and I'm having several problems playing videos on Gear VR - S6, are just running some 720P videos, 95% videos don´t play. To play I have to convert the videos files:
“ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -acodec libvo_aacenc -b: a 128k -vcodec mpeg4 -b: v 1000k -vf scale = 1 280: -flags + 720 + ica mv4 OUTPUT.mp4”
I´m testing with OculusUtilities_SDKExamples, scene MoviePlayer_Sample.

The script from SDK is very simple:
IntPtr androidSurface = OVR_Media_Surface(textureId, 2880, 1440);
AndroidJavaObject mediaPlayer = new AndroidJavaObject("android/media/MediaPlayer");
IntPtr setSurfaceMethodId = AndroidJNI.GetMethodID(mediaPlayer.GetRawClass(),"setSurface","(Landroid/view/SurfaceV");
…
AndroidJNI.CallObjectMethod(mediaPlayer.GetRawObject(), setSurfaceMethodId, parms);

This asset could help me? Panorama – render, play videos?
Any idea how do play video 360 with some quality on unity?

TKS.

 

Hi all,
sorry in advance for my bad English, I have a problem with equidistance mono type rendering for youtube video, when I choose 2k resolution all works fine, but when I select 4k the ceiling and the floor are correct, but the central part of the image is upside down

this is 2k correct


this is 4k wrong


thanks

 

I need more information - like Unity version, GFX card and Vram, VR Capture setting, are there any Image effects or scripts attached to camera or anything else that could interfere with rendering. (also, be sure that you don't have Oculus attached and on while rendering). Also, could you tell me if a Demo scene renders correctly in 4k?

 

Hi,
I tried the demo version and actually I have seen it work, so I did some tests on my scene and I saw that the problem is caused by the reflection probe.



If I disable it all works fine.
I used the standard VR Panorama Camera without other script

Thanks

 

This really looks strange. I'm not able to reproduce this problem. Probably has to do something with graphics drivers, or specific Unity version bug.

 

I'm trying to record a video of gameplay while using both the Google Cardboard SDK and the Panorama cameras. While just using the Google Cardboard, I am able to move the player object with the controls normally. When I turn on the panorama camera, I can't move the player object at all. I was told that the movement of the player object comes from the Google Cardboard camera's controls of which I am having trouble finding in any of the scripts. I have no idea why adding the panorama camera would affect being able to move the Google Cardboard camera.

 

Sorry, but I don't understand quite well what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to run capture panorama in realtime on a mobile device? I'm afraid this isn't possible - VR Panorama has to render a lots of data and requires GFX performance and VRAM that isn't available on any mobile device yet (and it won't be available in a near future).

 

Sorry, I should have made it more clear. This is all in Unity. I have the Google Cardboard camera as the main camera which is a child object of a "rig" object which also holds the player object. It has been scripted so that when in play mode the player object and the camera change view and direction when holding down Alt and moving the mouse. This works perfectly fine until I add VR Panorama. With VR Panorama running, nothing happens when I hold down Alt or move the mouse. I am unable to control the player object.

EDIT: It turns out there are no scripted controls for the player object. I added controls myself but I still wasn't able to control the player object while VR Panorama was recording.

 

You can't control player in realtime because VR Panorama can't render in realtime (it's a hardware limit, that can't be solved untill we get much faster CPU-s and GPU-s). Panoramas require a huge amount of data to be rendered, and this isn't possible for a moment with a current hardware. At least, not in acceptable resolution for 360 panorama. Main problem is video encoding that is done on CPU and requires lots of horsepower, or external encoding hardware (by using VR Panorama RT and GFX cards like Titan).
You have to treat a scene that you want to capture as a cutscene, and animate your camera and other objects with Mecanim Animation (like it's done in demo scene). Be sure to read a manual that you can find inside VRPanorama folder, it explains a workflow.

 

Hi.

Just bought your plugin. Looks nice from what I've seen so far but I'm getting some missing script warnings in the VRPanoramaRTDemo scene.

Your plugin was imported into a completely empty scene. I'm running Unity 5.2.3f1, under Windows 10 on an iMac (late 2013).

Cheers

 

It's a "Antialiasing image effect" that can be imported with standard assets image effects (I didn't include it in a package - I hate that practice, as most of the users would import standard image effects assets in any case).

 

I am unable to capture the a UI canvas with this 360 Panaorama. I saw a comment in this discussion, which I tried, but did not work:
"Yes, you can render them, but they have to be in World Space. Also, there are some procedures to follow - VR camera and Canvas should be parented to an object that holds animation (if you want to animate your VR Camera movements)."
Should this work, and if so how to debug and fix it?

 

Hi, I don't know what you are trying to do. It should work, but you have to setup it right. Could you send me a screenshot with settings that you are using with a description?

 

Hi @olix4242 , this looks like a great product! Is it possible to output custom resolution higher than 4K? I'm talking about 8K so that the visible viewport frame would have full HD resolution. Let me know, please.

 

Hi,
Yes, It can output power of two resolutions up to 8k (this is Unity's texture size limit). But your system should have enough VRAM (6 giga or more - this depends also from your scene complexity - shadowed lights and textures), so I can't answer with a simple yes or now. If you want to use image effects, some of them simply doesn't support greater resolutions.

Also, this applies only to static panoramas, as you won't be able to make a video with this resolution, as a 4k is at a moment a maximum for mp4 codec (and most other codecs available).

 

OK, thanks for a prompt answer!

 

Hello!
Thanks for your work...
I have added your VR Panorama Cam to my scene and it's perfectly situated, but when I press play or Render the Camera (camera Parent) Jumps somewhere else and renders just the skybox. I checked the camera parent and it has the same X,Y, Z as the VR camera and the VR cam still seems to be in the same place
?

& yes, I'm running on OS X ; )
Thanks
~be

 

From a screenshot I see that you have some scripts that shouldn't probably be attached on a VR Camera. "I phone Gyro cam", and probably "flytrough camera". You should attach only image effects (and image effects related scripts) and an animator (or you can put animator component on a VRCamera parent object - but this depends on your scene).
I'm quite sure that some of your scripts overwrites camera movements, resulting in a broken behaviour. VR Camera isn't realtime renderer, so any components that are made for realtime camera control (like WASD, mouse or gyro controls) will result in a incorect VR rendering.
Also, you could use scripted paths (if you are using for example a Cinema Director), and there shouldn't be any problems as long as you animate VR Camera parent object and not to a camera that holds VR Capture component (VR Camera).

Here is a simple explanation of how VR Camera works when activated:
In mono rendering it makes 6 copies of itself with different orientations (6 cube sides), and copies all scripts that are attached, except Animator (animator gets deactivated, so that only a main (vr Camera) animator gets executed. Those camera instances are then attached to VR camera and rendered. What happens if you have some other scripts attached? They will also be copied, but if they affect object transform, they will overwrite correct orientations and positions of camera rig and of cameras that are rendering cubemaps.

 

Thanks Olix4242
The flythough Script is just animating the VR camera on a path,
I tried adding a new VR Pan Camera with no other script / and than also attaching Animator with VR Pan Cam as controller... and the camera shows it's position in the smaller preview window. but Not in the Game window - it's still
displaced.

I will try again with a completely new project



Still in a totally new scene (see other pict)


Thanks!

~be

 

Still in a totally new scene (see other pict)


Thanks!

~be

 

It is Ok that it doesn't show any images in a game view (thius is done for performance reasons). What is a result of your rendered images? .

 

BTw, be sure that you are using Standalone Platform in build settings.

 

Ok, I've probably find where is your problem. You are probably using IOS platform. It could work, but if you are using that one, you should check Use Depth Buffer checkbox in VR Capture component otherwise a Unity Skybox overrides rendered scene.

 

Thank you Olix4242!
The Depth Buffer was the Trick ! ...
Now...
How do I take all these ind Photo's and make them a youTube 360º ?
: )

Thanks!
~be

 

If you have selected Encode H.264 after rendering, you should find your movie (mp4) in a same folder as your images. Unfortunately, on mac you can't see a progress of compression, but it should be there after some time (depends on a speed of your computer). If it isn't there, let me know, because a newest update for OSX breaks encoding in some cases. In that case, you should download a newest version of FFMPEG and replace with one shipped in VR Panorama. (inside "VRPanorama/External" folder.
You can find it here:
http://ffmpegmac.net/

 

Great ! Thank you Olix4242
I have been looking forward to this solution for a while Much Much appreciated!
~be

 

Ok one more...
I downloaded 360 video metadata tool to up load to youTube and I get this (view in chrome):

I am animating the camera with iTween, but VR Panorama is taking 6 pict at every frame, correct?
I am trying for the effect in some of your videos where the camera is on a path /through the scene

Thanks for your help
~be

 

Use ITween on a parent object that holds VR Camera, not on a VR Camera itself.

 

Hi

I've just bought your product and it is working very well so far.

I'd like to use it to make 360 stereoscopic pictures but the spheremaping you use isn't great when looking at the ground or sky because of the stitching.

Could you add a cubemap output? It's for the gear VR.

Thanks in advance.

 

-edit-
Found out it's my own problem, I would be using iTween script on a GameObject with the VR camera as its child, but not on the VR camera instead.


this plugin is so beautiful!
super easy to implement and works out of the box.

however it seems rendering with the setting of "Equidistant Mono" is not working using iTweenPath's "orientpath", mapping on the output image sequences got all messed up.

 

Can it use on Mobile?

 

Hi, thanks for a great asset. Just two questions.

First, is it possible to add support to render a 180 degree panorama and cut the file size and render time in half? Some games we have barely lets the viewer look behind (because he is constrained in a physical motion platform) so the front 180 would suffice.

And, can you recommend a good way to play back the videos or picture array in Unity? Using dual photospheres works but Unity takes a very long time to convert files as it imports them, and the playback performance of 4k by 4k is really not very good. Ideally, I dont want to import the files as assets at all but simply play back a video file at runtime.

Happy new year

 

I just bought your VRPanorama maker. I have made a small showroom which I like to put on 360 youtube.
When I hit "render panorama" I only get the .png/.jpg pictures, there is no encoding to a movie. Also when I hit 'encode H.246 video from existing sequence' nothing happens. I also tried it in your demo scenes but it didn't work there either. I'm using Unity 5.2.2f1 personal.

Below a print-screen of my Unity with the VRPanorama settings.



I hope you can help me!

 

I already download a newest version of FFMPEG and replaced it with one shipped in VR Panorama. (inside "VRPanorama/External" folder. as you explained in the post from `dec. 11. but it still not working. no movie after all the panorama's are made.

 

Greetings, I wonder if this plugin allows me to make an app in cardboard, putting video on a sphere and it is cycling, so that with the same function of cardboard may be seeing the video 360 (offline) from inside of the sphere.

Thanks

 

I don't know what could be a problem,. but it looks like you have some problems specific to our system . Maybe you have some execution/privilegies/security limitations on your system? Is should work fine 8on other tested mac's it works). Could you try to export JPG's and see what happens?
Unfortunately, I'm not very familiar and experienced with OSX system.
One tip: be sure that VRPanorama is installed into a default folder (Assets/VRPanorama).

 

You wouldn't get more than 10-20% of speed boost (and it would require rewriting of a whole plugin). As for file size, not sure it has much of a sense, most 360 players (facebook, Gear VR, Youtube) require it to be a sphere and you should anyway export it as a whole resolution video. With a half black frame, you could drop something of a bitrate, but not much (mp4 compression won't give you a linear drop of file size respect to a resolution and/or black pixels).

Unity's video player isn't suited for playing 4k videos. It won't even have a good performance with a standard FullHD. I know that they are working on some improvements, but I really have no clue when it will be actually added and/or if they will be enough for 4k video.
There aren't much of a solutions at a moment. The only one that can play 4K to my knowledge is a AVPro Windows Media (or AVPro QuickTime if you target OSX platforms).

 

It will help you make a 360 movie, but it doesn't feature any player for those movies. For playing movies, you should code it by yourself.

 

It was my mistake!!!!!! I renamed the FFMPEG file........ After fixing that, everything works ferry well
THANKS for the reply!

 

i need something like this:

 

Yes, I know, but VR Panorama isn't ment to do this kind of things.