Eifert

Can I please have some  guidance  of this . Using  Broadcast DE I  have  noi difficulty when using a recording of the talent against a billboard.  The AO works  well with that. However I cant get the Traced Cam to  show the AO , shadows or  reflections .

Thanks

AO won’t work with tracked cameras and you need dynamic lighting in the scene with Cast Shadows enabled to actually cast virtual shadows. 

Will that be changed in the future versions? Or are they technically to different? As when using tracked / non-tracked cameras in the same setup the shadows are so different in the end we had to turn them off. 

@Marc: Not sure what you mean? What would get change and how does the shadows look different? It’s exactly the same shadows being rendered in Unreal so it shouldn’t look different. You just need to set up the projection billboard plane to align the shadow correctly. 

Thanks  for  coming  back. Still trying to master Shadows  with Tracked  Cam  here. A  couple  questions:

- I assume that to cast a  shadow using Tracked Cam with Billboards,  the talent must  intercept the  dynamic light in the area where he is  placed in the scene.

-  You say AO  does not  work with Tracked  Cam.  Can AO  work  with a Virtual Cam where we have a live  talent as opposed to a prerecorded  piece with that talent. In the latter case of the recorded piece, it  works  for me, but I cant get it to work with live talent.

- With Tracked Cam using Billboards, I can't scale the talent. The  Gizmo does not work like it does when using Virtual Cam. My  only option in order to get the end  product  to look realistic  is to adjust the Scene scale in Origin - a tedious  process. Is there an easier way to do this 

Hello. Still having issues  with casting shadows in Aximmetry DE using Tracked Cam. I thought the problem may have been the  dynamic  lighting in the UE set. I increased the luminousity in UE  to 80 cd  in the area where the Talent will be  located  in Aximmetry, cooked and set up new project in Aximmetry. I also verified  that this light in UE  is  throwing shadows by placng a cube in the area in the UE set  that the  Talent  will be  locaatd in Aximmetery. There were no issues in UE casting a shadow of the cube.  When I place the Talent in the same  are in Aximmetry against a billboard,  there are no shadows. I tried with boththe  Lit fiunction on and off. No change.  Reflections of the Talent are  being  generated by the  virtal set - buit no shadows. What am I missing here. 

@Linford: I’ve already explained to you in detail why you can’t scale the billboard with tracked cameras in a previous post. It’s a projection, so it just doesn’t work like a virtual camera billboard would. Here’s a link to that post: https://my.aximmetry.com/post/4064-difficulty-in-positioning-tracked-billbohttps://my.aximmetry.com/post/4064-difficulty-in-positioning-tracked-billbo

The correct way to do this is to build the scene at a scale that is 1:1 with the intended real world scale of the scene. If you’ve done that, you might have an issue with the camera calibration or you’ve messed up a scene offset somewhere. It’s important that the floor height where the talent is standing is actually at world zero in Unreal. If it isn’t, nothing will align properly.

AO will work for both live and recorded video in exactly the same way. There’s absolutely no difference in Aximmetry if the signal is live or a file, so there’s something else that’s not correct set up. You’ve probably clipped the billboard plane below the floor plane. The correct way to do it (as explained in the documentation) is to use adjust the height of the billboard so it’s just above the floor clipping plane and then use the height offset to align the talents feet to the ground. You then use the from/back offset to align the AO to the talents feet. 

Regarding the missing shadow, you haven’t placed the plane at the correct position in 3D space. You can clearly see that it’s at the dark, rectangular stage, while the box that’s casting the shadow is mulch further back. Move the plane back so that it’s aligned with the talents feed. Even if the talent “appears” to be standing at the back on the wooden floor, it’s not being projected at that location, so it wouldn’t cast a shadow from there either. It’s important to understand that the video doesn’t contain any 3D information, so you need to align the plane to the talent manually to project it at the correct location. A more advanced setup would be to have a tracker on the talent, which would then move the plane automatically to align with the talent. A big benefit of this is that the talent can also move in z-space with the virtual shadows and reflections still aligning correctly. This won’t work without a tracker, again since there’s no 3D information in the video. 

@Twentystudios: Thank you  for the feedback and info. I have made some progress. It turns out, like you said, the issue  was the proper positioning of the talent  and billboard within the set . Once I found the right spot it worked. Painstakingly difficult though to find the right spot, as I am not using a tracker for the talent. Adjustments are being made using the Base  Cam Transformation of the Scene . I am still tweaking the 1:1 ratio by adjusting  with the scale in Scene. Is that a reliable way to do this or must these adjustments  to the scale be made for the set in Unreal.

Thanks again

Great! It’s not that hard to position the billboard once you get used to the concept and realize you’re not actually placing the billboard but offsetting the camera world zero tracking data.

Align the billboard using the grid overlay and make sure it aligns with the talents feet, because that’s where you’ll want to cast the shadow from. Don’t do any shadow offsets until you’ve done that.

Building the scane at the correct scale in Unreal is the correct way to do it. Changing the scale in Aximmetry adds another layer of complexity and offsets that make it harder to determine what’s going on. 

@Twentystudios : You're right . The Scale in the Scene  does not effectively  adjust the scale  to enable a 1:1 environment.  My scene is 1180 cm,  which I am trying to fit in studio space of 453 cm.   So I assume I  need to scale  everything down by a ratio of about 2.6:1. How do I scale this  down in UE  without  rebuilding the set completely. I imagine there will  be a requirement to readjust all of the lights also. 

The  next issue, is even if  I scaled down to 1:1 , how do I bring about adjustments  to the scale of the talent's image thats  being projected to the   Billboard, so that I ensure that it looks  realistic. I am using a PTZ  which  tracks the talent,  and in turn sends the Free D  to  Aximmetry to adjust the scene.  I can't scale the talent by adjusting the Zoom, as  that will also result in  changes to the scene.  Is it that I am  limited to  working with the  size of the image of the talent, and I  have to  make the appropriate changes to the scene with the Scene Base  Transformation.   

Thanks

I don’t understand? You don’t have to fit your physical studio inside the virtual studio space! The virtual studio can be as big as you want it to be. When I’m talking about matching the scale, I just mean the scale of your 3D scene you be correct relative to the talent. If you put the Unreal manequin into the scene and place it where your talent will stand you’ll have a good scale reference. Just make sure that the floor height in your 3D scene is at world zero, since any offsets here is sure to cause further issues when placing your talent into the scene. 

Now that you’ve mentioned that you’re using PTZ and not full 3D tracking I’m beginning to suspect that the issues you’re experiencing with scale is just a floor height offset problem. Remember that since you’re not getting 3D positioning from the tracking data you’ll need to manually enter the exact height of the camera, measuring from your floor to the center of the camera lens. You’ll also have to make sure your camera is perfectly level. 

@TwentyStudios:  Wow! Thats quite a revelation.  Having read and watched the tutorials I assumed that  when it was  said that the virtual and real world environment should  be set for a 1: 1 ratio, I assumed the real world included the  physical dimensions of the studio space.   I think camera height is OK. I have the setting in the Calibrator  at 161 cm. Floor height and green height is set to zero.

I am able to make adjustments to the scale of the scene using the Scale function, and genmarally  have better  control now of setting up the scene  with the talent so as to get the  shadows.

Thanks for your valuable insights.