Initial Blender VR Experiments

Maybe this will help? https://github.com/xavier150/Blender-For-UnrealEngine-Addons

Tom Nelson

I was looking for special tutorials for the creating modelns in blender and exporting them to unreal. didn´t found a lot unfortunally. is there someone out there who can give some advices?

Oh heck yeah! Man, I feel like we're so close to that!

Ian Hubert

Oh man I'm still super struggling too. I suspect I should just watch some tutorials (my internet was out when I was experimenting, so I was just clicking random boxes)- I should try diving in again! yeah being able to make assets in blender and easily flow them to unreal would be fantastic!!

Ian Hubert

This would be so great to be in the scene in VR while recording mo-cap! That way you don't have to worry about eyeline or anything

Dear Ian, would be great to see your experiences from blender to unreal. I´m struggling with the uv mapping and material import. but i also see a great opportunity in combining both workflows.

I thought you were wearing a star trek shirt until I noticed it was a gnome pin

Michael Holtz

Ah thanks Joey! I think Haarish is talking about the stadium full of people, with like thousands of flashes. It was super easy, actually! All of the audience was just one object, and I gave it a particle system referencing a collection containing only a cube with a super bright emission material, and I made the particle life only 1frame, (or maybe 2?) so the cube would just appear randomly all over the audience object. That's literally all I had to do! As Joey said, having bloom enabled in the eevee settings really helped sell it.

Ian Hubert

You could try animating the brightness of a light or an emission object, to go from 0 to something high, then back to 0. If you're in eevee using bloom will help.

Joey C

ian how do you made camera flashes in your crab vs robot video help !

It's so interesting how much better and more realistic PBR materials look in VR. They can be practically identical to their flat screen appearances yet somehow the depth perception in your eyes makes it just feel completely photoreal. Half Life Alyx blew me away when I played it first. I spent like, 2 hours just admiring the bottles and props in the opening area. On another note, if you put together a Dynamo themed VR experience in Unreal, that would be SICK!!! I would pay to play that!

Joey Lawson

Man yeah it's wild!!! The tools are ludicrous! I put it off long enough- finally trying to learn the basics. It's nice to hear that it doesn't replace a blender workflow as much as it just adds an additional possible step at the end of it? At least in terms of scene construction.

Ian Hubert

I’d love to see how you use Blender and Unreal together for your films. That program is blowing up especially with metahuman and UE5 coming out this year

Completely second this, you are such a damn pleasure to learn from and just follow through your beautiful disorienting adventures.

Alex Ezorsky

Ah I did!! I'll see if I can dig up the link to the post when I get to a proper computer.

Ian Hubert

I lost it when you had the scary music with the screwed up can geometry. Not only are your videos super informative, I love your sense of humor.

Brett Williams

It will be really interesting to see how this tech develops over time! Though this nascent stage is pretty fun too :D

Olof Friström

ian pls make a Ae2blend tutorial

Virtual Ian, finally meets real Ian. End of season episode.

you are a wizard, Ian

Jonas

I'd enjoy anything where I get to appreciate all the micro details we won't get to see in the final cut! I know a lot of effort goes into every bit of the environment

Evan Barron

Oh cool!! Yeah I'll look into those! I'm kind of antsy to experiment with a more directly VR oriented program now :D

Ian Hubert

:D Actually! I have enough environmental assets that I've been wondering about making a small kinda vibe-type scene, as part of the release of the first episode? I'll have 3 months while the sound team is wrapping up audio (plannns to send it to them this friday)- that could be a great first project to try to tackle in Unreal?? Probably a lot more complex than I think, but at the very least it's scalable (room without a view- then with a window, haha).

Ian Hubert

This made me realize how much I truly want a VR game taking place in the Dynamo universe

Evan Barron

Thats great to see you entering the world of VR! You can use Oculus exclusive apps like Medium (very intuitive and free) with an app called Revive (from Github) on your Vive. Theres also on very great app called Quill (the magic of animation). Check it out! 😄 Do I used too much brackets?! ((no)yes) 🤷‍♂️

It finally happened. Ian has entered his own reality, will we ever hear from him again ?

Gabrial Wolf

This Blender VR workflow video comes right in time. Thank you, Ian! Unreal Engine gets more and more involved into my workflow. Right now Blender and UE are the main tools for me.

I actually went the opposite way... I came to Blender from Unreal for EEVEE. I was tired of having to go back and forth with Maya and baking tons of stuff. The timeline in Unreal can be buggy and strange. The instant gratification of EEVEE and doing everything in one program was really attractive. That and I felt like my projects were a bit bloated by having to have a set of files for Maya, Unreal, Substance, etc. I do see the advantages for virtual production, but I suppose it’s not for me right now. UE5 might change my mind tho...

Shawn Hawkinson

AH! That's a really good point!! I also feel like PBR shaders should translate fairly directly, but I haven't really experimented yet. SimplyBake! I'll look into it, thanks! :D

Ian Hubert

@Ian I've been saying SimplyBake to get things into Unity realtively painlessly Maybe finding a good baking workflow will make it so you still don't have to worry about the UV's (since they would just get auto unwrapped when baked anyway )

@Dustin that's awesome !

Man that's how it feels!! It's a 2-fer; my first time using voice controls and first time implementing macros. Feels so much more like I'm in control of the tools!!

Ian Hubert

This is Iron Man with blender powers! HAHA so cool!

Blake Rizzo

Perfect timing, I just got an Oculus Rift 2 a few days ago!

I thoroughly enjoy just watching Ian being excited about and messing around with new things. Makes it so much easier to learn from him.

Ian

I feel like you COULD do that?? Even if it's just with "auto-keyframes" turned on?? I'm excited to see if I can do it, soon. Could be a fun way of animating cameras, for sure :D

Ian Hubert

I wish blender had the same features with UE4's Virtual Production set up, it's so powerful. Attaching a camera to a controller, placing it onto a rig then recording it's keyframes live.

Barks916

Yes! And I think it might be a stepping stone to learning python scripting?? I'd been trying to get into that but I couldn't figure out when I'd want to use it in my workflow, but after messing around with the voice macros it's like- oh, yeah. Okay.

Ian Hubert

Dude voice macro is actually legit useful. especially once your keyboard gets super full of shortcuts but there are the occasional really useful things you want to do on the reg. Feels similar to photoshop actions. *edit* pretty obnoxious for your family late at night though XD

UM YES I MUST. I haven't played with the sculpting yet!! I gotta see how well it works!

Ian Hubert

Sculpt a cat in VR :D

Tom Smith

It's been really fun diving into it!

Ian Hubert

Ahahahaha, I think they're still included in the vending machine asset. Did I ever update that file?? Is it still cursed?

Ian Hubert

I love the nightmare cans, when is the lazy tutorial for nightmare cans coming out?

Oh man yeah! For some of the stuff I'd love to be doing (realtime tracking/set extensions/all that), I think it's definitely the best tool around at this point! I started diving in a couple days ago (again, without any access to tutorials/googling, so it may not be QUITE as complicated as I think), but it seems to be a BIT less forgiving of my "photoscan-everything/jumble-the-UVs-who-cares-it'll-render-alright" workflow, but those are just things to figure out. The fact that I can flow live footage into it., and key stuff and track it and all that, means I could do viewport compositing but, like... live?? Which with a sidestep could be a GREAT way to keep post from taking literal years, hahaha. Still no idea how hard it is to actually implement, but it looks surprisingly straightforward, so I'm optimistic!

Ian Hubert

This was a really enjoyable decent into some kind of docile madness.

I've done Unreal + Blender, to VIVE and played around in it....but this is different and cool, and I will have to try it out!!! I

Todd Kushnir

I was curious if you had dived into Unreal at all. What are your thoughts? Are you thinking of including it in your workflow at all?

Very cool... want.

Doug Brown

Yeah- Unreal definitely seems the way to go for a bunch of reasons. I think Blender could work okay for a static background, but for responsiveness/flexibility (and real-time keying??) Unreal's proving incredibly powerful. Using the Vive controllers in Blender for realtime animation/puppetry/camera animation/environment design could still totally be viable, though!

Ian Hubert

I actually looked into this before, i wanted to have a camera parented to vive tracking data using my vive headset for a handheld look but it just didnt work. Virtual Production is unfortunately seems stable in Unreal at the moment.