The VSHOW Camera System in VRCHAT
- Vshow
- May 13, 2025
- 3 min read
Without a doubt, something that has always caught the attention of both our clients and the people who view our projects is the camera system in VRCHAT. Many have asked us how it works and how this is possible.
"A lot of people think we make each camera stream a different way and then just merge everything into an extra stream to make it work. It makes me laugh a lot." - TecnoAnime
TecnoAnime: The truth is we didn't invent the wheel or discover Fire, similar systems to this one already existed before, for example the creators of Club Orion used their own system for the "Orion music festival" , the first time I saw something like that, I saw it at the kendo event of the evening, it was very crude, it lagged but it worked, it had been programmed by LiveDimensions, some time later I remembered that so I spoke to him so he could create the system again but more polished and exclusive for us.
DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING
By then the potential of such a tool was already in mind, therefore, the only thing Vshow needed was a Test event to be able to practice for the future and this would be the "PENCAST" Podcast Project made by 2Bines Onlyjozed and TecnoAnime .
If you are interested in learning a little about this Podcast, watch the following video.
But how does it work?
The programming itself is simple and at the same time not, the first thing to understand is that we will use "C#" (C SHARP) which is a multi-paradigm programming language developed and standardized by Microsoft as part of its .NET platform
We will not go into details but that is the basis of everything, once you understand the language you have to understand "UDON SHARP" which is a COMPILER that allows you to create C# Scripts for Udon assembly code .
In plain English: copy our C# scripts to work in VRCHAT, as not all C# variants work in VR
If you've ever used Unity, you'll know that the default cameras are quite basic and feature-limited. For this purpose, a solution called "CINEMACHINE" was created, which has long since become the standard and is integrated into the latest versions of Unity.
Some of these features include dolly cameras, point-to-point tracking, smoothing, and many more. Pickup cameras use the same system used to grab objects in VR Chat.
These cameras are pre-positioned in the Unity project of the respective world, pre-configuring the aerial, static and grip cameras.
How do we switch between camera views?
For this we need to configure a UI or user interface , which is based on various "RENDER TEXTURES" which are rendered at a very low resolution and FrameRate, so that it does not SIGNIFICANTLY affect performance; however, since it is VRChat, it always will.
We distribute the cameras in various pre-configured tabs, allowing us to divide the cameras into "folders," making them easier to access.
On the left we have the main VIEW which is the one that appears LIVE on the broadcasts.
HANDHELD CAMERAS
We cannot fail to mention the functions of these cameras.
To ensure our cameramen performed well, we worked on a virtual camera that could deliver good results, so the following functions were implemented:
SMOOTHING : by not holding a camera with a real weight, from Unity we can pre-configure the amount of smoothing that the camera will have so that the PULSE of the cameramen is not so noticeable, although of course they already have a good base pulse for the work
ZOOM : Zoom is something we consider important. The cameras can be preconfigured with various lenses, but being able to change the zoom was vital, so a zoom-in and zoom-out system was developed that works for both VR and desktop.
Preview : The most important thing was that the cameramen could see what they were focusing on, for this we included a small Render texture on the cameras at a low resolution and low framerate so as not to affect performance, this little information is enough for the cameramen to be able to focus on their objectives without having to look elsewhere.
We will soon be doing a special BLOG chatting with our cameramen.
That's the key to understanding how our system works, which is included in all VSHOW projects.
Thank you for reading our blog. We hope it resolved many of your questions. We wish you a wonderful evening, and see you next time!
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