Epic Games releases free iOS app Live Link VCAM for UE4
Epic Games has released Live Link VCAM, a free iOS app for virtual production work that makes it possible to control a virtual camera inside an Unreal Engine scene from an iPad or iPhone.
Users can drive the motion of the 3D camera from their tablet or mobile, adjust zoom and focus, and record the camera data for use in Sequencer, UE4’s cinematic editing toolset.
A free iOS companion app to Unreal Engine for virtual location scouting and cinematography
Epic Games’ latest free iOS companion app for Unreal Engine, Live Link VCAM is a virtual cinematography tool for virtual production and previs work.
It supersedes Epic’s old Unreal Remote app for virtual production work, providing a “more tailored user experience”.
The app uses Apple’s ARKit framework to stream positional and rotation data from an iPhone or iPad to a virtual camera within Unreal Engine, then streams the virtual camera view back to the mobile device.
Users can drive the 3D camera by moving their tablet or laptop, and adjust its parameters from the mobile interface, including lens focus, zoom and iris settings.
As well as scouting virtual locations, Live Link VCAM can be used to record actual takes for VFX or animation projects, with directors and DoPs able to record camera data via Unreal Engine’s Take Recorder.
It features timecode support via the iOS device’s system clock or a NTP server, plus support for TentacleSync, enabling it to connect to the master clock on a professional capture stage.
The app provides a free alternative to commercial virtual camera systems for Unreal Engine like Glassbox Technologies’ Dragonfly, which has its own iOS companion app.
We picked Live Link VCAM as one of the 10 key features of Unreal Engine 4.27 for CG artists when it was announced last month.
System requirements and availability
Live Link VCAM is available free for iOS 14.0+. It is compatible with Unreal Engine 4.27.
Use of the Unreal Engine editor itself is free, as is rendering non-interactive content. For game developers, Epic takes 5% of gross beyond the first $1 million earned over a product’s lifetime.
Read more about virtual camera workflow in Unreal Engine in the online documentation
Download free iOS virtual cinematography app Live Link VCAM from the App Store