15: Mercury Panel

Overview

The Mercury Panel is an Application inside the Live Assist Panel that allows to easily store and replay virtual camera movements. It is mostly used in trackless mode.

General Presentation

Mercury Panel runs on LAP 2.8.1. It is strongly recommended to run it on Chrome.

Mercury and Prime VSAR are communicating through the DataEngine.

• The first column deals with menus and tools.
• The other columns are dedicated to the cameras. Each configured camera has its own column. Each camera column contains snapshots of camera positions. In the following example, there are 2 configured cameras, each of them having two snapshots.

Access the Mercury Application

From the Live Assist Panel web interface, go to Applications → Mercury

Note: Mercury Application should be installed with VSAR, if this is not the case it can be installed manually. It is located in “[VSAR installation]\Thirdparty\Panels\lap.mercury-master.lapp”, and can be added within Live Assist Panel → Settings → Application Manager → Install Application.

The File Menu

File > Show Manager

A show is a full Mercury project, with all the cameras and corresponding snapshots. Here you can:

• New: Create a new empty show.
  • You have to enter the name of the show you want to create and the number of snapshots per row (default is 4). When the show is created you automatically switch to the “File>Camera Manager” (see below).

• Open: Open an already existing show.
• Delete: Delete an existing show. Acknowledgement will be requested on Show deletion.

File > Cameras Manager

• “PRIME VSAR” The first dropdown lists the Prime VSAR (computers) connected to Mercury. Here the selected system name is ‘dakar’.
• “Cameras” The second dropdown list, shows the CH Cameras present in the ‘dakar’ Prime VSAR.
• “Request Update” will refresh the 2 dropdown lists. This may be useful if you experience connection issues with Prime VSAR.
• “Attach camera to viewer” will create a new column in Mercury to handle the selected camera. Repeat this operation as many times as needed. You are not required to create a column for each camera.
• “Remove camera from viewer” removes the corresponding camera column.
• “Close” closes the dialog.

File > Quick Save Show

Under normal operation, the show configuration is automatically saved when exiting “Edit mode”. If for some reason you want to save the state of the show during “Edit mode”, select this menu.

The Toolbox

• “Show” displays the name of the current show (here “Show0”).
• “Preset Duration” when On (green) the selected time will be used to start camera transition. When Off (red) the time given in the snapshot will be used. There are 3 available preset times that you can set.
• “Edit Mode” when On (green) edition can be done on snapshots (see below) and camera transitions are forbidden, when Off (red) edition is disabled and camera transitions can be run.
• Editing only: “Store Position”, when you click this button a new snapshot is immediately created for the currently selected camera. A default name and duration are set.
• Editing only: “Delete Position”, when you click this button, the current selected snapshot is removed. An acknowledgement is required.
• Editing only: “Rename Position” posts a dialog to change the name of the snapshot.
• Editing only: “Edit Position Duration” posts a dialog to change the duration of the snapshot.

Cameras and Snapshots

This example displays a show made of two cameras. The first one has four snapshots, the second has two snapshots.

• The currently selected camera has a red frame around it(in the top part, you can see a name of the selected camera in a red frame). Here the first(Ch_CesiumCamera_0) camera is selected.
• The currently selected snapshot has a red frame around it. Here the fourth snapshot of camera 1, and the second snapshot of camera 2 are selected.

It is possible to deselect a snapshot by selecting another snapshot or by clicking outside of the snapshot area.

Trigger a camera move: When a snapshot is selected (red frame), and if “Edit Mode” is Off, clicking again on the same snapshot will trigger the camera movement.

The used duration will be:

• The selected preset duration, if “Preset Duration” is checked.
• The snapshot duration, if “Preset Duration” is unchecked.

During the camera move a thick green frame will blink around the snapshot and the duration will countdown.

When the actual position is reached the green frame will still be displayed around the snapshot.

Move snapshots

To move snapshot:

1. Check select Edit Mode.
2. Select a snapshot. A red frame will surround the image.
3. Select either:
   • An empty location: the snapshot will move to this location.
   • An already created snapshot: the positions of the two snapshots will be exchanged.

Virtual Trackless Controller with CAMIO

Camera’s snapshots can also be recalled with the CAMIO Template “VirtualTracklessController”.

The camera snapshots used by VirtualTracklessController needs to be premade in Mercury.

1. Drag and drop the VirtualTracklessController form the Place actors panel.
2. It will spawn several cesium cameras, this is normal behavior.
3. Select the VirtualTracklessController in level and in the details panel select “Export CRD..” and import it to CAMIO.

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Note: LUCI Render is using spawned camera not the actual camera to take images and while rendering the duration is 0

Note: ⚠️ While using LUCI Render with VirtualTracklessController it does not support AR Shadow and Reflections plane.

 

Template Editor in LUCI5

The template as the following replaceables:

• Project: The name of the “Show” in Mercury Panel (Note: Not to be confused with VSAR Project name)
• Camera: The name of the camera actor in the VSAR level (eg. CH_CesiumCamera_0)
• Snapshot: The name of the snapshot to recall
• Duration: The duration in seconds of the transition from the current camera position to the snapshot position

 

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