Stream Vicon Shogun camera to a cine camera in Unreal Engine 4.26

This topic describes how to link a camera that is tracked in Shogun Live to a cine camera in Unreal Engine 4.26. 

Watch a Vicon video that shows these steps in detail: 

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Before you begin

Ensure you have installed the Vicon LiveLink plugin, to enable you to stream the data from Shogun Live to the Unreal Engine.

Set up the project

1. In Unreal Engine, select the appropriate option for your project.
   
   
   
   
2. Open the Virtual Production template.
   
   
   
   
3. Select a location for your project, enter a name for it and then click Create Project.
   
   
   
   
4. In the LiveLink window, click Source, then Vicon Data Stream Source.
5. This example shows PCs connected using static IP addresses, so the following image shows the address of the Shogun Live machine. Because object-tracked objects are used, they’re streaming on port 804.
   Click Create.
   
   
   
   After you click Create, you can see the objects that are currently tracked in Shogun. In the following example, three objects are being tracked.
   
   
   
   
6. So that you can easily reconnect when you re-open the project, save a preset of your LiveLink settings.

Drive the camera

You can drive the camera in several ways: the following steps describe one simple method.

Change the animation role that the subject is initially assigned to a transform role. To do this:

1. In the LiveLink window, select the required subject.
   
   
   
   
2. In the LiveLink Details pane, from the Translators menu, select Animation To Transform.
3. Expand the array translator and add the bone name of the prop in Shogun, which in this case is ‘root’.
   
   
   
   
4. As you’ve made changes, it’s good practice to save this as a preset too.

Drive the CineCameraActor

You now need to drive the CineCameraActor, which is found in the default level.

1. In the World Outliner, select CineCameraActor and then click Add Component and find and add a component called LiveLinkController.
   
   
   
   
2. Select the new LiveLinkComponentController and in the Subject Representation, select the name of the required subject, which in this example is VCAM.
   
   
   
   
3. In the Role field, select LiveLinkTransformRole.
   
   
   
   
4. In the Perspective view, you can see that the camera is displayed with its Vicon Shogun orientation.
   
   
   
   
5. To correct this for the Unreal cine camera pose, you need to rotate the camera component. To do this:
   1. From the Details, select CameraComponent.
      
      
      
      
   2. In the Transform > Rotation field, change the values to:
      X: 90.0, Y: 90.0
      
      
      
      This is the correct transform for the Vicon prop translating into the cine camera in Unreal.
      
      
6. Test by tilting, panning and rolling the camera to ensure the movement of the camera matches the movement of the cine camera in the Unreal scene.