Instantly align Unreal Virtual Production sets and real studios using Aruco Markers!

[@viseworksvisual]

Thanks a lot Greg! I've been struggling forever to figure out how to make it standing on the ground!

[@GregCorson]

This can be very handy if your tracking system isn't anchored to a spot on the ground. A lot of people had this problem when using VIVE without a headset, this should fix that.

[@frozeninfernovfx9460]

Greg this is fantastic! This is exactly what I messaged you a while ago about 😄 thank you for doing this.

[@GregCorson]

Glad to hear it helped you!

God bless U !

[@Tenchinu]

insanely useful!!!! thnk u :) using this trick with the previous, full studio set tutorial should make it a little easier

[@GregCorson]

The full studio setup tutorial covers this too, but it had a download link to the aruco resources. This tutorial has a simpler aruco resource you can make from scratch in a couple of minutes.

[@mayurshri]

@@GregCorson thanks a lot..I have been searching this for quite some time. Can you let me know how can I contact you

[@GregCorson]

If you look in the "about" section of the channel there is a button to send mail.

[@geoffrey3668]

Thank you for the video!

[@linfordfevrier5011]

Well done Greg. I found this extremely useful. I was getting hell trying to position the hands of my Talent on top of a table for a TV newscast. What version of UE did you use for this video. I am using UE 5,1

[@GregCorson]

I think this was also done with 5.1

[@dougl9758]

@gregcorson - So great - thanks! I can't seem to find the axis_guide static mesh. I've created projects in 5.1 - 5.4, and then looked at meshes in the starter content - but don't ever see that... Thoughts on where that static mesh is located?

[@GregCorson]

If you go to the content browser and search for "Axis" it should be there. But it's in "engine content", you don't have to load starter content to see it. If it doesn't show up, go to the settings in the upper right of the content browser and make sure "show engine content" is checked, then it should show up.

[@dougl9758]

@@GregCorson Yep - that did it! Thanks GC

[@wavelogic8471]

Is this meant for static cameras only? I can get it to align up perfectly, but as soon as I pan or tilt the camera, it goes off alignment. With lens distortion and nodal offsets setup.

[@GregCorson]

If you have some kind of camera tracking, this should work for moving cameras. If you don't it will only work for a static camera.

[@iPEMiC.]

Useful!

[@unityvirtualproduction]

Can you (or anyone reading) make any recommendation for similar workflow usingUnity Engine on macOS (Apple Silicon)?

[@GregCorson]

I can't be much help with Unity because I've never used it. Sorry.

[@AlejandroGuerrero]

Hello Greg. Thanks for this excellent tutorial. How do you load the ruler for cms. measures into the project? I look up inside the marketplace and there is one Simple Ruler, but it looks like it is not available. Thanks.

[@GregCorson]

Hi, that ruler in the background is actually something I built. I haven't really released it yet because there are some issues with it that can cause unreal to freeze if you use it wrong. I may eventually release it but the problem is that to release stuff for the market place you have to keep up versions of it for every release of the engine (blueprint assets are not backward compatible). So I would have to keep a bunch of versions of unreal on my machine all the time, and they are quite big! It's not too hard to make your own chart, just download a "police height chart" from google images and paste it on a plane that is the same size.

[@Kimmbo]

Hello Greg. Thank you for your tutorial it was working really well, however I've run into a weird problem where when i click apply to camera parent it doesn't match up with the Aruco marker instead it moves the camera inline with it the marker facing 180 degrees in the wrong direction. Do you have any idea why it could be doing this? Thanks

[@GregCorson]

Sorry for the delay getting back to you. Not sure exactly what you mean here. Is it like the camera is showing up on the opposite side of the room but still facing the aruco, or is the camera where it should be but facing the wrong direction? One thing that may not be obvious is that the rotation of the aruco matters. So make sure the aruco is facing the same way in the unreal scene as it is in your studio, this would be the reason for the camera showing up on the wrong side of the room. Other things that can cause problems are having locations/rotations in your camera and parent objects that are not zeroed out before you start doing this. Let me know how it goes.

[@jbvideography316]

Does this also work without a tracking system? I would like to use 3 static cameras (also no zoom lenses) for a Livestream. It would be perfect to use this method to align everything correctly.

[@GregCorson]

Yes, check out this other video on the channel for how kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGLUfKqIqM6fY7M

[@brettcameratraveler]

Have you tested the mm precision of this method? How do you think it will compare in stability, repeatability and precision to a vive tracker (hard mounted to the stage with a heavy amount of jitter filtration)

[@GregCorson]

It is rather difficult to test this down to the mm level since you would have to have mm accurate real-world measurements to compare against. The precision of aruco tags has a lot to do with the quality of the camera's distortion calibration, the resolution/quality of the video as well as the size and distance to the aruco tag. It is very difficult to guarantee all these things are totally accurate. In general you can get more precise results by using larger tags, shooting them close up and making sure the tag is absolutely flat. At least so far in my experience, the results are accurate enough for good Virtual Production videos.

[@PhilipLemon]

I've been trying to set up vive trackers without a hmd but because I can't run SteamVR room setup without a hmd, my camera rotation and position is out of whack. Would an Aruco marker allow me to calibrate the camera position? Or do I still need a Vive HMD? Thanks again for all the work you put in. It's been real eye opener.

[@GregCorson]

I haven't been using the VIVE a lot lately, as I recall from other people's postings, the main issue in using VIVE without an HMD is that you can't do a room setup to put the origin point of the room where you want it. I think that without a HMD it ends up assigned to the location of one of the base stations and is not very predictable. Using this aruco method will create a transform that moves the origin from wherever the VIVE thinks it is, to wherever the aruco tag is in the scene, so it should work with VIVE trackers. In this tutorial the "camera parent" actor contains that transform. So you would have the camera parent with the camera attached and vive live-link data going into the camera. If you have several vive trackers/controllers, attaching them under the camera parent would also put them in the coordinate system defined by the aruco tag. I'm not sure if VIVE without an HMD will turn on with the same origin position every time, so you might have to do the aruco alignment every time you power cycle/reboot the system.

[@PhilipLemon]

@@GregCorson Cheers Greg. I decided to get a Cosmo Elite headset and it's working a treat except for what seems like a bug when binding trackers as clicking create new doesn't appear to have any effect other than on the controller. That Bliss system looks great. It looks like it doesn't suffer from the same jitter as the vive, though it is a bit out of my price range :(.

[@cinematicmediapro6959]

Excellent Greg!!! Does this method work in Unreal 4.27?

[@GregCorson]

Yes, it should work in 4.27

[@sinanarts]

ıf Greg were to sell these tutorials %90 of us would not afford this much precious know how.. I always admire such characters like Greg. can't thank you enough for all these efforts. You are an VP academy on your own 🙂

[@GregCorson]

Wow, thank you! Glad to be of help.

[@ClassyDogFilms]

Hi, Greg! I have a question- I'm adding the blueprint components as seen at the 4:30 mark in your video, but when I don't see "Calibration Point" anywhere in the list. I'm using UE 5.0.3. Do you know if I may have done something wrong, or perhaps I'm not using the right version of UE to have access to calibration points? I've searched for an answer, but haven't found anything yet. Thank you for making these videos, by the way! They are very well produced :)

[@GregCorson]

I thought I replied to this a few days ago, but it must not have saved. The "calibration points" may be a part of the lens calibration plugin. Make sure you have that plugin enabled on Unreal's plugins menu and then check again to see if calibration points show up. Please let me know what you find.

[@ClassyDogFilms]

@@GregCorson Thank you, Greg! That's exactly what I needed to do it seems- I enabled the "Camera Calibration" plug-in and now the option shows up to add the calibration points into the blueprint. Thank you so much for your help!

[@mybfsasha4803]

I got suck at 10:40 once I complied the Blueprint the actual Mesh vanished dont know why anyone else had that problem?

[@parametriq_]

set up the size in variables and adjust divide number

[@behrampatel4872]

This is fantastic. Does any of this require a paid plugin or is it all included within UE 5 now ? Greg have you figured out a way to get the UE vcam app to record video ? It'd help getting started with VP so much more than having to use a aja card and a dslr. Cheers for this amazing tutorial man.

[@GregCorson]

No special plugins are required, all the stuff you need is included with Unreal except for the aruco tag asset I built and made available through my github (linked in the description). As far as vcam, sorry I don't know if there is a way to do this, I haven't looked into it.

[@JMY1000]

I'm having trouble with this in Unreal 5.3.2; although it appears to detect the Aruco (it pops up when I do Show Detection), the four points don't load in. I tried changing the calibrator to Nodal Offset Points, and doing each of the four Aruco points manually, but that crashed as soon as I did Apply To Calibrator Parent. Any ideas?

[@GregCorson]

I'm not certain, but I know there will be problems with the Aruco calibrators if the lens calibration plugin wasn't enabled on before you imported my pre-made arucos into the project. I'm reworking my sample projects right now for 5.3 and 5.4, I'll let you know if I find anything weird.

[@ziqiangliu6589]

CalibrationError We could not find an appropriate Aruco dictionary for the selected CalibratorMake sure you have selected a Calibrator containing Calibration Point componentswith names per the naming convention described in the info section of this algo Copy Message ----------- He will make such an error. May I know how to handle it

[@GregCorson]

This can be caused by several things, your camera must be able to see the aruco clearly with good lighting and no glare. In the lens calibrator you have to select the aruco tag actor you made early in the tutorial. Also the naming of the calibration points in the aruco tag actor you create must be right, they all need to begin with dict_6x6_100-8 as shown around 7:16 in the video, this is how the calibrator tells what tag you are using. The last number 8 means you have printed out tag number 8. If you have printed a different tag you need to change this number. Let me know if this helps, feel free to ask more questions.

[@ryansalazaracosta2596]

Hello Greg, I followed step by step the tutorial but my visible position calibration points are not placed in the exact corners, there placed at the interior of the plane, I dont know why. is that could be a problem?

[@GregCorson]

The little purple squares really should show up on the corners of the black area of the aruco when you create it in Unreal. Or do you mean that when you do the part where you detect an aruco in your video, the CG aruco doesn't line up with the one in the video?

[@GrowthMindsetDigital]

Thank you so much and so excellent tutorial !! Now that method can support Unreal Engine 5.3 😀

[@Lardgemon]

Thank you, Greg. You are awesome!!! Please keep up the great work 🙏 💪 👍 🙌 🙂 👏...

[@timreha]

Sweet nice video!

[@VictoRs107]

Hmm Greg are you still using the system htc vive? Now you don't have a floating camera effect. Looks nice, and tracking looks much better.

[@GregCorson]

Not using the Vive anymore. Using the RETracker Bliss which is much better.

[@patriziusthirlwall4800]

p͎r͎o͎m͎o͎s͎m͎

[@ziqiangliu6589]

Hello, may I ask how your lens calibration file was created? Why did I report an error here

[@GregCorson]

My lens calibration file was made with the unreal lens calibrator, if you check on the channel you will find several videos on how to calibrate a lens. I have one for the vive, one for the bliss and a few alternative methods for measuring the nodal point of your lens manually.

[@ArianaMusicNetwork]

Great as always

[@waifongthng5982]

Thanks Greg.. been researching this for so long, couldn't find any documentation before.

[@GregCorson]

Yes, the lens calibrator is pretty poorly documented. They only cover the most basic stuff and even that not very well.

[@4KLIVE3DVR360]

in 12:46 why I cant find the CameraCalid_Comp? whats I miss? thanks Greg Corson🙇‍♂

[@GregCorson]

That actor only appears when you have the lens file/camera calibrator window open, if you close it the CameraCalib_Comp thing will disappear. It will come back (and need to be set again) when you reopen the lens file again.

[@4KLIVE3DVR360]

Thanks Greg Corson, is work, but where can I download the dummy character using UE?

[@4KLIVE3DVR360]

Hi Greg Corson, where can I download the dummy character in the UE scene??

[@GregCorson]

Sorry for the delay replying. The mannequin is actually part of some of the unreal template projects. If you create a project using the 3rd person template it will be in there and can be moved into another project with the migrate function. There are also a couple of free packs on the unreal marketplace, search "mannequin" with "free" selected and you will find them.

[@4KLIVE3DVR360]

@@GregCorson but how can I get the ruler side of the dummy?