Hack of the official Unreal Engine Ansel plugin for allowing continuous capturing (360 videos)
This plugin is a refactoring of the Epic's official one (https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Plugins/Ansel/Overview) to allow multiple captures using Nvidia Ansel technology.
Examples here:
As the Ansel api does not allow to trigger 'snaps' programmatically, this plugin uses a brutal hack by sending raw input event (spacebar pressing) to fake the Ansel gui to generate a new screenshot (after the world tick has advanced):
INPUT SpaceBar = { 0 };
SpaceBar.type = INPUT_KEYBOARD;
SpaceBar.ki.wVk = VK_SPACE;
SendInput(1, &SpaceBar, sizeof(INPUT));
SpaceBar.ki.dwFlags = KEYEVENTF_KEYUP;
SendInput(1, &SpaceBar, sizeof(INPUT));Currently Unreal Engine 4.20, 4.21 and 4.22 on Windows are supported.
You can download a binary release from https://github.com/rdeioris/AnselCapture/releases or just clone this repository in the Plugins directory of your project (in this second case you obviously need to compile it).
Ensure the official 'Ansel' plugin is disabled and then enable the 'AnselCapture' one (read: this one).
If you are on Unreal Engine >= 4.22, disable any VR-related plugin
After having restarted the editor just setup your project for starting the Ansel session using a Blueprint:
as you can note, forcing a fixed frame rate is highly recommended.
Two Blueprint UFunctions are exposed: "Start Ansel Capture" and "Stop Ansel Capture"
Note: the plugin uses the Nvidia libraries already included in the engine for the official 'Ansel' plugin.
After the setup is complete, click on 'Launch' (the plugin will not work in PIE mode) and as soon as the Ansel interface opens, select the 360 (or 360 stereo) screenshot mode and click on 'SNAP'. Now do not move your mouse out of the snap button and let the plugin do its work. (remember, it is a slow task, various seconds for each frame)
To stop the capturing, just press escape or move the mouse out of the 'snap' button. (or configure your blueprint logic to stop the capturing automatically).
If you accidentaly move the mouse out of the 'snap' button, just click again on it to continue capturing.
Once the capturing ends, you will find the various screenshots in the user 'Videos' directory. Now you can assemble the frames with something like ffmpeg or your video editor of choice.
Contrary to the official one, this plugin does not enforce disabling of features (like the HUD, fading, and so on). This is mainly for leaving it super-simple (so users can easily hack it) and because technically there is little sense in not building an ad-hoc level for registering a 360 video. Postprocessing effects disabled by the official plugin, are disabled here too.
The other big refactoring is the UpdateCamera() function: in this plugin it is heavy-commented and refactored to be more clear (and again to simplify hacking of it).
The plugin development has been sponsored by Dnart (http://www.dnartstudio.it/)