This week involved a lot of continued prep for Softs. Ean did a lot of work on updating our set, condensing the motor and speed changer into one section of the set and modifying the hallway chunks to be more modular, so as to allow a greater sense of distance in how far the minifigure is away from the store.
Ean also looked into getting an iPhone camera working based on Ralph’s suggestion and was able to use the OBS Camera plug-in to do so, having to first install iTunes on the computer to authorize using his iPhone, as well as downloading the plugin on the computer and the associated app on the phone. The downside is that the video has a very large watermark that requires a one-time fee of $69.99 or a monthly ($10.99) or yearly ($18.99) subscription to remove.
Esther inquired about getting clean game footage and Ean looked into OBS Teleport, which is a plugin that would allow two computers to be networked together and send footage from one PC to the other. We realized that this would solve a whole host of issues, since we had to resize the Fortnite game window to fit the set which took a lot of hassle, and having it instead be streamed to OBS meant we could just do a window capture and resize it there. This also solved the camera focusing issue since we could just focus on the minifigure in the foreground and have the clean game footage be behind it. Coupled with OBS using a layer based system, we can easily have resizable game footage more closely matched to our physical set. Ean worked with the ETC’s tech department to set up the networked PCs and the process can be easily recreated and used now. Below are quick tests showing a screen-share from one computer to another using OBS Teleport, as well as what the result looks like on camera.
Building off of this, Arthur finalized getting the camera change for the running completed, allowing us to focus and have the best blending of the physical and digital spaces we had yet.
Now understanding the pipeline for creating the zombie particle effects, Harley was able to add two more zombie particles into our level to have some uniqueness in the zombies that were following the player.
Esther, Ean, and Isabella all worked on getting a bunch of pre-recorded footage taken to be edited into the final presentation, focusing a lot on getting generic shots that could be cut between and using both a Canon Camera as well as an endoscope camera for some visual variety.