Original subtitles

The video you're watching right now,

it's a gausian splatting environment was

captured from a real location right here

in Manchester. I scanned this location

using my 360 camera and after completing

a few important steps, I imported the

entire model directly in a real engine.

So, in this video, I'm going to explain

you full process step by step how I scan

the location, which camera I use and

what software I use to complete this

process. And most important, what

mistakes I've done along the way so you

can avoid them if you want to try this

for yourself. So, don't skip the video

because you're going to miss important

steps from the process and probably

you're going to get stuck along the way.

To capture the location, I use my Insta

360 X2. It's a solid camera, records in

manual mode, and gives me a four

resolution, which is great. Along with

the camera, I had the selfie stick,

which I used to mount the camera. I

picked one location in the city, the one

that I wanted to scan for a long time.

And the method I used was very simple.

First, I walk left to right in a zigzag

pattern across the entire bridge with a

selfie stick above my head, exactly how

you see in this footage. In this way,

you cover more details of the bridge. If

you want to shoot in a busy place, you

should wake up in the morning, otherwise

you'll have people walking all around

you, which is very annoying. I did a few

tests before and it was a lot of people

and was very frustrating. Once I reached

the end of the area I wanted to scan, I

turned around and walked back in a

straight line. No zigzag movement from

left to right anymore. Then I did one

more pass with the camera positioned

close to the ground. The first time I

scanned the bridge, I skipped the floor

and the result looked a bit funny. By

lowering the camera, I thought that

would fix the problem, but in the end it

didn't. All this was captured in a

single recording and it took around 8

minutes to complete.

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If you own an Insta 360, you

automatically have access to Insta 360

Studio. Just go on their website,

download the app, and install it into

your machine. Insert the SD card, and

the app should instantly ask if you like

to import your capture video, which is

very useful. Select your file on the

right hand side, then head to the export

tab, go on the 360 video, pick your file

name, and export the file into your

desired location. Set the bit rate to

maximum, resolution to the highest

available, and encoding format. In my

case, I'm going to use H.264. Depending

on your footage length, this step is

going to take a while. In my case, it

took around 30 minutes to process and

export the video. At this point, the

file is ready to go. If you watch my

other tutorials, you know, I always put

extra effort into this because even

small adjustments make huge difference

in the end. After some quick tweaks in

Premiere Pro, the footage looks a little

bit much nicer. You can see before and

after here. It's a very small change,

but trust me, in the end, all the

details matters. Hey YouTube, before we

move on, I just want to say thank you

for watching this video. I really want

to hit 5,000 subscribers by the end of

the year, and you are the only one who

can help me. So, please don't forget to

subscribe. Now, back to the video. Once

you color grade the footage, either you

export it from Premiere or Insta 360

Studio, I use the 360 portable kit by

Cinematic Tob. He created a script that

combines FFmpeg with Alice Vision. I'm

going to link his tool and his YouTube

channel down in the description below.

All you need to do is download the tool

and open the BAT file. Drag the exported

360 video file. Check how many frames

you want. I think this is going to split

each second from the video in one frame.

For the testing, I use one and I let it

run. This automatically will create a

folder with a bunch of image sequences.

Just open up the folder and you can see

them right there. Next, we are going to

drag the folder that just been created

in the second part of the script. This

process will split your 360 images into

multiple 2D images that represents that

photo. In my case, I set to have eight

splits with a resolution of 1,200 and a

field of view of 100. Depends how many

images you have in the folder. This step

can be quick or you might have to wait

some time. Now if we put everything side

by side, first you would have the 360

video that you capture it with a camera

and then you split that video into 360

images and then later the 360 image has

been splitted in eight image. Crazy how

powerful this tool is. At this stage you

can either use reality capture to speed

up the process or go directly in

postshot. For me reality capture

struggle to align all these images. So

I'm going to skip this step and jump

directly into postshot. Now, one thing

to note is Photoshot is no longer free

or sort of. You'll need a subscription,

but the advantage is that lets you save

the file that can be loaded into an

Unreal Engine with the plug-in. So, this

is very useful. Sadly, exporting as a

PLY is no longer available in the free

version, but don't worry, you can still

follow along with this tutorial.

Once you open postshot, I drag the

folder with the split images to drag in

the last folder you just created. Drag

it into the software. Keep all the files

max image count. Switch to splat MCMC.

This is going to give a better results,

but it's going to take a longer time.

So, be aware. Start training immediately

and stop it at 300,000 steps. The more

steps you have, the sharper and cleaner

the result will be. For me, it took

around 9 hours to train this file. After

that, the result looked amazing. better

than the first few tries. I could

finally explore the spot inside postshot

on the left. You can switch between

different viewings. Point cloud camera

alignment which did a very great job. If

you see fuzziness, use cleanup tool to

remove all the unwanted artifacts.

[Music]

And very important, very very very

important, don't forget to save the

file. Now it comes the fun part. Yes,

you can bring your spots directly into

Unreal Engine. Open Unreal Engine. Start

a new project in firsterson mode.

Once the level started, make sure to

enable the postshot plugin under the

edit plugins and type postshot

and give a quick restart. When the

project opens, I deleted the default

shapes, leaving just the floor and the

blue cubes.

Then I drag my save post shot file into

the new folder inside Unreal Engine.

If you want to move the splot in the

environment, the pivot point probably is

going to be off. So to fix this, I place

an actor in the center of the bridge.

Then made the splat a child of the actor

so I could position everything

correctly.

From there, I adjusted the scale of the

splot. The real bridge has 6 m wide, so

I align six andreal engine cubes side by

side to get the dimension right. Just

remember, always lock the scale so you

don't stretch the model weirdly. Once

the splot is aligned, you can hit play

and explore the splot. But there's a

catch. Gausian splatting files don't

usually have geometry, which means we

don't have physical collision. To fix

this, I built a basic shape in a real

engine. I created the floor, the side

fences of the bridge, stairs, light

pose. Essentially, I created the entire

environment using cubes. When I

finished, I made those cubes invisible

in the details panel. Select all the

cubes, type visible, and then check that

bit. So the game had proper collusion

while keeping the splat visual. If you

want to play in the game, just move the

cubes however you want. Ideally, it

should be position on the geometry that

you just created. Finally, I move the

spawn point to always start at this

little path before the bridge. Now,

every time I hit play, I'm going to

start from this location.

Heat.

Heat.

[Music]

And that's pretty much it. This is how

you bring any locations from reality

directly in Unreal Engine. All you have

to do is to have a 360 camera and follow

this workflow. You can bring anything

inside and you can play, you can create

your own video game. So, thank you for

watching. I really want to hit 5,000

subscribers by the end of the year. and

I know you are the only one who can help

me. Thank you so much for watching and

I'll see you in the next one.

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