Adaptation B: VR/360 Video Tests using Domemaster3D

For a few days now I've been watching an array of tutorials about how to directly render out a 360/VR video out of Maya. I struggled to find something that exactly met up with the software I had access to, some tutorials used Arnold instead of Mental Ray, software like Nuke, 3DS Max, or game engines like Unity or Unreal which I have no experience with. However, I found a few tutorials that I thought were useful and I thought I'd try combining a bunch of different things that I watched to try and accomplish the same outcome.

Adaptation B: VR Test #1 from Deanna Crisbacher on Vimeo.

I used Domemaster 3D to get cameras into Maya that would render two separate images which is used for the two lenses in a VR headset such as Google Cardboard. I had to make sure I rendered it in a 2:1 ratio because of how I would stack them together in After Effects later on. After that rendered out, I brought both the left and right renders into After Effects, and put the Left view on top of the Right view to make a 2048 square video. I tried exporting it in two different ways: one using Media Encoder and selecting the 'Video is VR' box then 'Stereoscopic - Over/Under' because that was the type of camera I used/how I put the video together in After Effects (VR/360 Video Test #1). I didn't render out of Maya at super high quality because it was just a quick test but make sure you have the option set high on Youtube/Vimeo. Also, even though the thumbnail looks deceiving because it's split, Test #1 worked.

This essentially injected the video with VR metadata that is read by Youtube/Vimeo to then play the video as 360 or VR if you are watching it on your phone or other VR device. I also exporting the video without that 'Video is VR' option (VR/360 Video Test #2) then using Spatial Media Metadata Injector to inject the metadata into later. However, this did not seem to work (I probably did something wrong) but using Media Encoder seemed to be a simpler way anyway. I also uploaded my successful test to Vimeo to ensure it worked on there as well.