Re: PlayblastVR Renderer for Softimage Released
Posted: 18 Nov 2016, 18:37
If you use any of the traditional rendering engines in Softimage and render out an Equirectangular/Spherical/LatLong movie (360°x180° field of view) video file it can be made to work with YouTube 360 and Facebook 360. Both sites use the same panoramic metadata information so your same final movie content can be placed on the sites using the same uploaded file.homam wrote:Do you have a tutorial that explains how to render compatible VR YouTube video using your shaders?
YouTube 360 is pretty simple from a delivery concept. You render out your panoramic footage to an MP4 H.264 video file at 4K UHD resolution with either an accurate equirectangular 2:1 aspect ratio 3840x1920 px resolution, or a stretched 3840x2160 px resolution for the finshished equirectangular 2D mono movie.
Then you use the free YouTube Spatial Media Metadata Injector tool to add the required tags to the MP4 video file so it is detected automatically as panoramic footage when the movie is uploaded.
PlayblastVR for Softimage as a VR previz tool has the YouTube 360/Facebook 360 metadata embedding feature built-in so it's panoramic movie renderings are ready for you to upload to the internet the second the batch rendering stage is complete.
When you upload a panoramic video file to YouTube you have to wait until all of the different resolutions of the video are processed by YouTube's video encoding system before you will see the panoramic YouTube 360 navigation controls added to the video. This can mean you have to be patient for about 5-10 minutes after the movie is finished the uploading stage before you will see it in "VR" on your desktop or mobile devices. Don't freak out impatiently the second your movie finishes the initial YouTube upload stage if it looks like it is playing back as a non-panoramic video clip the first instant you have a visible YouTube timeline video play control you can press.
If you want to explore the more exotic world of pre-rendered panoramic 360° stereo imagery you will have to place the left and right equirectangular views into an over/under frame layout. For simplicity many people squeeze the aspect ratio a bit so the over/under imagery is placed into a 3840x2160 px frame format. Here is the YouTube support page that gives a bit more information on the delivery standards for YouTube 360:
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/6178631?hl=en
If you want to upload your VR video at 8K resolution you will notice that many video encoder programs like Adobe Media Encoder, or Apple's Compressor tool won't let you compress an H.264 video to that high of a frame size. This will mean you will have to explore another video codec like GoPro's Cineform, H.265 (HEVC), or even uploading a monster sized QuickTime ProRes movie.
Using FFmpeg is a good way to encode an H.265 movie from your renderings if you are comfortable using a command prompt window. There are several GUI wrappers for the FFMPEG command line program if that is something more agreeable to you.
I posted a sample command line syntax for FFmpeg encoding a movie to H.265 with audio support on this blog post here along with details on how to playback H.265 video in a VR media player like GoPro VR Player by using the VLC based playback engine.
If I missed any other details required on how to get your pre-rendered panoramic 360° renderings ready for distribution, please feel free to ask any other questions you might have.
I'll give it a try soon and let you know how it goes.