UE Toolkit for Virtual Production

2024.10 - 2025.1

Custom Tools for Collaborative Studio Workflow

Unreal Engine

At my internship studio, we do a lot of virtual productions, and with each production shoot, the workflow that is tailored to the equipment and the team’s workflow becomes more streamlined.

With more defined procedure also comes with the need for customized tools that reduce repetitive work. Therefore, custom toolkits specially made for virtual production are constantly being made in the studio. However, software tools for Unreal Engine have been lacking previously. I was able to help our team build some of the first Unreal Engine plugins that serve various functions.

My Work

I am in charge of Unreal Engine plugin and system development based on the needs and feedback of the virtual production technologists/artists in our studio.

Take Recorder Controller

The Take Recorder Controller is used to allow for controlling the Take Recorder in Unreal Engine. This allows Unreal Engine to be synced with Blackmagic Hyperdeck in starting/stopping recording using an Elgato Stream Deck. This plugin is a part of the bigger setup that we use to record the footage from the cinecamera actor in Unreal Engine to Hyperdeck along with time code.

Light Controller

The Light Controller aims to help lighting artists avoid adjusting multiple similar lights in a scene one by one. The user can quickly adjust properties for lights of a certain type or all lights.

One of the challenges for such a plugin to work in a virtual production workflow is that since nDisplay and multiuser session is almost always used via Switchboard, the local edits the user makes have to be synced to other machines in real time. Another challenge is our studio artists want edits made in Game Mode to persist after existing Game Mode, which is not normal behavior in a game engine like Unreal.
The development of this plugin is still ongoing, with future plans of adding functionalities for color calibration and sync with DMX lighting.

Demo: 2 Editor Machines + nDisplay Node Connected w/ Switchboard

Enlin Li

Kanagawa, Japan