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How to make a Virtual Reality Film - Beginners Guide.
Big companies are finding out quickly making a VR film is tough. So how can us little guys do it if the big boys are struggling? Well, I'm here to help you with that, right now you can compete with the big boys and get your film out there.
5 Min Read
With all the buzz around VR you'd think all the big film companies would be running to develop virtual reality movies; and you'd would be right. The big movie studios are investing millions in VR everyone from Disney to 20 century fox is in on the action. However even the big companies are finding out quickly making a VR film is tough. So how can us little guys do it if the big boys are struggling? Well I am here to help you with that, right now you can compete with the big boys and get your film out there.
It's a little more natural for us film makers with a game design background to transition into this new space, so if you never studied game design I would recommend it, you don't need to go back to college but you do need to study up. The user is very important in virtual reality, game designers are always aware of the user's position and forward vectors / focal points and how to draw the users attention towards something my old boss Chadd Portwine use to always tell me there are two ways you can lead a user to where you want him to go, either by pushing them or pulling them, each way has a very different design approach. For now all you need to know is where the user is looking can totally impact the way your film is perceived.
First you have to define what type of VR film you want to make:
Smart VR films - Do you need to control where the user is looking? This is a major design choice, if you are going to spend a lot of time & money on creating a VR film than you have to prepare for two major designs, either the user has action all around him or you have to have a smart design behind drawing the users attention to the focal points.
Interactive VR film - Do you want to give the user the ability to move around in your film? This you'll definitely need a game engine behind you. If you don't have a team, start experimenting with unity or the UE4 engine. I use UE4 because I love its realistic rendering capabilities and its matinee system is great for film creation and yes you can use 360 video inside both these engines. NOTE: (Unity is further along than UE4 when it comes to playing videos but hopefully with my constant barrage of requests epic will step up their game and stop putting their Media Framework on the back burner. PLEASE for all us)
Straight 360 Video - this is much easier to pull off than the above two
Once you figure out what type of virtual reality film you want to make that will determine what type of team you will need to pull it off.
Now how do you start?
I wrote a post on how to create 360 videos here
With all the buzz around VR you'd think all the big film companies would be running to develop virtual reality movies; and you'd would be right. The big movie studios are investing millions in VR everyone from Disney to 20 century fox is in on the action. However even the big companies are finding out quickly making a VR film is tough. So how can us little guys do it if the big boys are struggling? Well I am here to help you with that, right now you can compete with the big boys and get your film out there.
It's a little more natural for us film makers with a game design background to transition into this new space, so if you never studied game design I would recommend it, you don't need to go back to college but you do need to study up. The user is very important in virtual reality, game designers are always aware of the user's position and forward vectors / focal points and how to draw the users attention towards something my old boss Chadd Portwine use to always tell me there are two ways you can lead a user to where you want him to go, either by pushing them or pulling them, each way has a very different design approach. For now all you need to know is where the user is looking can totally impact the way your film is perceived.
First you have to define what type of VR film you want to make:
Smart VR films - Do you need to control where the user is looking? This is a major design choice, if you are going to spend a lot of time & money on creating a VR film than you have to prepare for two major designs, either the user has action all around him or you have to have a smart design behind drawing the users attention to the focal points.
Interactive VR film - Do you want to give the user the ability to move around in your film? This you'll definitely need a game engine behind you. If you don't have a team, start experimenting with unity or the UE4 engine. I use UE4 because I love its realistic rendering capabilities and its matinee system is great for film creation and yes you can use 360 video inside both these engines. NOTE: (Unity is further along than UE4 when it comes to playing videos but hopefully with my constant barrage of requests epic will step up their game and stop putting their Media Framework on the back burner. PLEASE for all us)
Straight 360 Video - this is much easier to pull off than the above two
Once you figure out what type of virtual reality film you want to make that will determine what type of team you will need to pull it off.
Now how do you start?
I wrote a post on how to create 360 videos here
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