Check out virtual cinematography tool Radical VCam
AI motion-capture firm Radical has launched Radical VCam, a new virtual cinematography tool.
The tool, currently in public beta, enables users to use an Android or iOS mobile device to control a camera within a 3D scene in Radical Canvas, Radical’s collaborative online 3D editor.
Radical pitches it as a way for film-makers and previs artists to plan shots and test camera moves ahead of a live shoot.
Part of Radical’s growing range of AI motion-capture and scene editing services
Founded in 2017, Radical (strictly speaking, it’s styled ‘RADiCAL’) was the first of a new wave of AI-trained motion-capture platforms.
Its original offline service, Radical Core, extracts the motion of an actor from single-camera video footage and exports the animation in FBX format for use in DCC apps or game engines.
Newer cloud-based service Radical Live streams to Blender, Maya, Unity or Unreal Engine 5.
The company has also recently launched Radical Canvas, a “multiplayer 3D editor”.
It enables users to create and edit 3D environments collaboratively in a standard web browser, uploading assets in OBJ, FBX or GLB format, and keyframing lights and cameras.
Use your mobile device to control a virtual camera within a Radical Canvas scene
The new Radical VCam tool is available within Radical Canvas, and enables users to look through and move any virtual camera in the scene using an Android or iOS phone or tablet.
You simply select the virtual camera you want to control, click a button to generate a QR code, and scan the code on a mobile device to create a link.
Radical VCam supports depth of field effects, and comes with a basic range of preset lens, sensor size and aspect ratio settings, from 8mm to 70mm and 4:3 to ultra-widescreen.
The tool is still in beta, and lacks key functionality, particularly the ability to record camera moves. Recording, along with zooming and motion stabilization, will become available “soon”.
A simple, lightweight tool that doesn’t require you to download any software
Compared to high-end virtual cinematography and simulcam tools like The Third Floor’s Cyclops AR or Glassbox Technologies’ DragonFly, Radical VCam is pretty bare-bones.
Epic Games also has a free app, Unreal VCam – available for Android and iOS – that let you use a phone as a virtual camera inside an Unreal Engine scene.
You can find more details in this story, written when the app was still called Live Link VCAM.
However, all three are based around Unreal Engine and require installation on your mobile device, whereas Radical VCam works with a standard web browser and requires no downloads, so if you’re looking for a simple, lightweight solution, it may be worth a try.
Price and system requirements
Radical VCam is “designed to be used with any handheld internet-powered device”, including both Android and iOS devices. Radical Canvas is browser-based: Radical recommends Chrome.
Free subscriptions support up to 10 Canvas scenes and 10 collaborators, with a limit of 1GB on imported assets, plus limited access to Radical’s AI motion-capture features.
Professional subscriptions cost $16/month or $96/year, and support an unlimited number of scenes and collaborators, with up to 20GB of assets. Find a detailed feature comparison here.
Read more about Radical VCam on Radical’s website
Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects.