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Two pronged question: Is there currently an addon or process in which I can use a virtual camera in Blender? (a virtual camera is like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAFVglxzkhI) I mainly want to be able to do that within blender but I have not found anything like that. Including in this post (Any tools to capture movements from a mobile phone to Blender?)

Second question is if there is no system out there like that, then how can I go about making a virtual camera addon myself? I do not have a VR system so I cannot test a system like the video above so I would like to make a bootleg version using my smart phone (both iOS and android something like this but connected to the camera instead - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcylkhyauC0 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMEea6drOPA). I have made apps for both android and iOS and I would like to make an app that connects wired or wirelessly into blender (Similar to Unity Remote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdhliD0zupg) Once connected I would use the smart phone to connect to the blender camera and connect as a bootleg virtual camera but I have no idea how to go about this and I would like some help please.

If anyone out there could direct me in the right direction where I can find further information on how to go about this I would highly appreciate it thank you!

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  • $\begingroup$ Do you realize, that the rig in the video uses motion tracking markers and a motion tracking system? You will need a way to track your camera. Motion tracking or a VR System are the main options. $\endgroup$
    – Leander
    Aug 9, 2019 at 13:58

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I don't think it is a good idea to use a phone for running Blender. You will probably need to come up with some other hardware solutions to display the scene that would be portable as in the example video.

If you know how to get movement and orientation data from some device, moving camera in Blender via Python is not a big deal at all. You could use an accelerometer and gyroscope sensor connected to some microcontroller board - probably would be easiest to use an Arduino, maybe have a look at this one that comes with Bluetooth Maybe then receive data with pySerial...

Once in Blender, you can take any camera and move it with scene update Application Handler continuously. It's as easy as bpy.data.objects['Camera.001'].location = ... and bpy.data.objects['Camera.001'].rotation_quaternion = ... You might want to add functionality, like for example recording the movement to keyframes and so on. That is obviously also achievable with Blender's Python API.

I suspect that you might want to add quite a lot of additiona features like that and probably some sort of an interface so at the end of the day, this might not be the most suitable/enjoyable first project to try for someone without any knowledge of Blender's Python API. You might want to dedicate some time to learning to use it first.

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  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the advice! Ill take to learning Blender Python then. $\endgroup$
    – EmperiumIce
    Aug 9, 2019 at 4:36
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Recently an iOS developer released virtual camera app for AutoDesk Maya. The plugin is open source licence for development to other 3d softwares. I contacted him regarding the plugin for blender. Waiting for his reply. Also contacted him about android version also😎

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  • $\begingroup$ Is there a forum discussion or something where BSE users can see progress, contribute? $\endgroup$
    – Robin Betts
    Jul 30, 2019 at 5:32
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks V GK, would you be able to link to the virtual camera app for maya? I was unable to find it $\endgroup$
    – EmperiumIce
    Aug 9, 2019 at 4:33
  • $\begingroup$ What is the name of that app?.... $\endgroup$
    – melMass
    Oct 24, 2019 at 11:21
  • $\begingroup$ It's called virtucamera.com $\endgroup$
    – V GK
    Oct 25, 2019 at 12:05

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