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Basic Set-Up: How to Render 360/180 Degree Output Unreal Engine Movie Render Queue

How to set-up a render using the OWL 360 Render Pass for Unreal Engine Movie Render Queue (MRQ)
Written by Off World Live
Updated 4 months ago
You need to include the Off World Live Toolkit plugin ONLY in your Project Plugins folder (not your Engine plugins folder). You can find a guide here if you need.
  1. In your UE project go to Edit>Plugins and search 'Movie Render', to enable the Movie Render Queue (MRQ) plugin: 
  2. Before Restarting the engine go to Edit>Project settings, Search “OWL” and make sure Enable OffworldLive Movie Render Queue Pipeline is ticked:
  3. Restart Unreal.
  4. In Editor create an OWL 360 Camera (it's recommended to only add one OWL 360 Camera to your scene), either by:
    1. Drag-and-dropping it from Place Actors into your scene:
    2. Attaching an OWL 360 Capture Component to an existing camera or actor (this is best if you have a sequence already set up):
  5. Please use the details panel of the OWL 360 Camera/ Component to:
    1. Preview your output using the Render Target. If you select this, you should 'Pause Rendering' when not previewing because it uses valuable GPU capacity. It is not required for Movie Render Queue. (see full guide):
    2. Select/ Hide elements for Alpha output using the Show Only/ Hide Only selectors (see full guide): 
    3. All other settings should be controlled in the Movie Render Queue UI as shown below. 
    4. Color adjustment should be done using a Post Process Volume NOT using the Post Process Settings on the 360 Camera as explained here. 
  6. To render from Movie Render Queue you need to create a Sequence by clicking the clapboard icon in Editor and selecting Add Level Sequence:
  7. If you have created a new Sequence, drag your camera (OWL 360 or Unreal camera as in Step 4.2) into the Sequence window:
  8. Whenever you want to render, click the clapboard icon at the top of the Sequencer and select Render Movie>Movie Render Queue:
  9. In your Movie Render Queue 'Settings' add the OWL 180/ 360 Rendering option: 
  10. This option allows you to control the different 360/ 180 degree settings of your render. It should be used in combination with the main MRQ Output settings as described below:
  11. In the OWL 360 Rendering Settings section you can select:
    1. Select Path Tracing: The tickbox switches path-tracing on and all Path-Tracing settings should be selected in the Movie Render Queue Path Tracer section.
    2. Projection Type: Here you can select between Equirectangular, Cubemap, VR 180 (Stereo), 180 Mono Equirectangular and DomeMaster.
    3. Output resolution: This will override your output resolution in the main MRQ Output section. You can select Custom for larger resolutions.  
    4. Advanced> Intermediate Bit Depth: This selects the color depth of your render. 
    5. Advanced> Disable Parallel Rendering: This should be used for very high resolution or high RAM usage renders. It renders each frame sequentially preserving memory.
    6. Advanced> Selective Cube-Face Rendering: This renders certain cube-faces in case your projection surface doesn't require full 360 coverage.
    7. Settings> Accumulator Includes Alpha: Tick this if you have used the Show Only capability in the OWL 360 Cam to output alpha as described in step 5.2. PNG format is recommended. For color correct layers used in compositing please use Stencil Clip Layers with .EXR and 32 bit colors (below).
    8. Post Processing> Disable Multisample Effects: This disables additional pixel sampling for effects like Depth-of-Field, Motion Blur, Anti-Aliasing and Ambient Occlusion. 
    9. Deferred Renderer Data> Use 32Bit Post Process Materials: This should be selected if you will composite/ color grade in external software such as DaVinci or Premier Pro using .exr format. (See full guide here).
    10. Deferred Renderer Data> Additional Post Process Materials: Here you can add Post Process Materials as required. (See full guide here).
    11. Stencil Clip Layers: This is for rendering multiple layers for use in a separate compositing software with .exr format. (See full guide here). You can select:
      1. Render Main Pass: Tick this if you want to render the full output in addition to your layers.
      2. Add Default Layer: This will render anything that's not assigned to a layer in the two options below.
      3. Actor Layers: Select any Actor Layers you want to render here.
      4. Data Layers: Select any Data Layers you want to render here.
  12. Click 'Accept' when you have selected the settings you need and then in the main Output section select:
    1. The Output Directory where you want to save the rendered frames.
    2. Your File Name Format (if you need to change this).
    3. Your Frame Rate (you can select from the drop down in Unreal) and Frame Count.
  13. Click 'Accept' and you will return to the main Movie Render Queue page where you can now click 'Render'!
  14. Your files will now be saved to the folder selected in step 12.1.
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