This week, we focused on capturing motion and camera movement within Unreal Engine using mobile devices, specifically through the Unreal Live Link VCam system. The session introduced us to how smartphones and tablets can be transformed into virtual cameras to control real-time camera movements in a 3D environment.
Setting up the VCam was surprisingly straightforward and really fun to experiment with. In Unreal Engine, the Live Link VCam plugin allows users to connect a mobile device—like an iPhone or iPad—and use its sensors to drive a virtual camera inside the game or animation scene. This means you can physically move your phone and see those motions reflected live in Unreal, which is amazing for filming cutscenes, adding natural hand-held camera effects, or even for virtual production setups.
The workflow involved several important steps: enabling motion capture plugins, establishing a Live Link connection, setting up remote sessions, using the Take Recorder in multi-user mode, configuring the virtual camera, and finally installing the Unreal VCam app on the mobile device. Although some technical hiccups occurred—mostly related to network connectivity between the devices and the host computer—these were manageable and mostly tied to shared institutional networks.
What really stood out was how immersive and intuitive it felt to “be the camera.” Instead of relying on keyboard controls or mouse clicks, the VCam lets you literally move and frame shots with your phone, capturing dynamic, fluid camera work with real-world motion. I’m really excited to test this further on my own devices and home network to see how well it performs outside of the campus environment.
Overall, this session was a great eye-opener to how emerging tools like Live Link VCam are changing how we can create and capture cinematic animation shots in real time, making the process more interactive and physically engaging—so cool!
Project Progress:
For my artefact video, I decided to explore the theme of Identity—something that feels really personal and important to me. I’ve always been interested in how who we are gets shaped not just by our own thoughts or feelings, but also by the constant pressure from the world around us. Society has these quiet but powerful expectations—about how we should behave, what we should want, even how we should look or speak. Over time, those expectations start to influence us more than we realise, and it can feel like we’re slowly changing just to be accepted. In that process, it’s easy to lose the messy, beautiful, real parts of ourselves.
With this in mind, I began working on a rough storyboard. Even though my final piece won’t have a traditional storyline, sketching out the scenes helped me imagine how to visually communicate this emotional journey.
