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Gaming
Mixed Reality videos make VR games a lot more fun to watch. In a way, watching people play games can be more fun than playing them yourself. There are thousands of “Let’s Play” style videos where the player records their gameplay and commentary for the audience to interact with. This is such a successful model that the most famous Youtuber, Pewdiepie has earned anestimated $124 million since 2010. The bottom line is, people like to engage with personalities and feel a sense of friendship and connection, no matter how minute that might be.
Virtual Reality games are great at conveying players’ emotions, so seeing them physically move and dodge conveys the largest amount of implicit emotion.
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Experimental Filmmaking / Instant CG
James Cameron’s Avatar was groundbreaking for a multitude of reasons, however one technology that was developed during the course of the film was called SIMUL-CAM. Since most of the film was shot in greenscreen studios, the actors and directors needed a better way of visualizing what the final CG render would look like. What they developed was a 3D tracked camera that had a live feed of what the CG + real actor renders looked like.
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This key piece of technology is now available to anyone with an HTC Vive.
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Want to shoot Mixed Reality footage of your experience? Checklist:
You’re using the SteamVR Camera prefab
Script your shots, and direct your actors. If the talent isn’t emotive, then the experience doesn’t look as “real”
If controller models don’t need to be there, have an option to toggle them off (if they’re not guns).
If you have an HMD model in your game, it’ most likely should be toggled off as well.
EXTRA PRO TIP: have a way to rotate the world around the player to set up shots without having to recalibrate the room and change the front/back settings. Pinch to Zoom/Scale works great for some shots(See Tiltbrush, or City VR above), but having a keyboard command to rotate the environment would make things much easier!
Helpful Links:
Video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZI7-3rK-X4
Text Guides to setting up an MR studio:
http://uploadvr.com/make-mixed-reality-video-livestream-two-realities/
High Quality MR Trailer writeup: http://www.kertgartner.com/making-mixed-reality-vr-trailers-and-videos/
Behind the Scenes of Making an MR Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8bSeLca130
Source: Medium