Current Viewport Grabbing with AppGrabber Plugin
The AppGrabber plugin takes a snapshot of the current viewport each frame. Each snapshot is put in the internal Image and can be obtained via the engine.grabber.getImage() function. Then you can use this snapshot for any purpose: for recording a video, for streaming data to broadcasting applications and so on.
The AppGrabber enables to specify a resolution of the grabbed snapshot (up to 4K), independently on the current window resolution. To set the required output resolution, you should specify additional options on the application start-up. Also the plugin enables grabbing the current viewport with or without the main GUI of the application.
Usage Example
To get a snapshot of the viewport in the current frame and then save it to a file, call the engine.grabber.getImage() function in the world script update() function:
#ifdef HAS_APP_GRABBER
int update() {
// grab the viewport in the current frame
Image image = engine.grabber.getImage();
// save the grabbed image to a file
if(image != NULL) image.save("grabber.png");
return 1;
}
int init() {
// add nodes to the scene here
return 1;
}
#endifSee Also
- engine.grabber Functions
- A data/samples/plugins/app_grabber_00 sample that demonstrates how to get snapshots of the viewport and save them asynchronously.
Launching AppGrabber
To use this plugin, specify the extern_plugin command-line option together with the required start-up options on the application start-up, for example:
main_x86d -data_path "../" -extern_plugin AppGrabberAppGrabber Options
The following CLI options can be specified on the application start-up:
- grabber_width - width of the grabbed snapshot.
- grabber_height - height of the grabbed snapshot.
- grabber_gui - value indicating whether the main GUI should be grabbed or not:
- 1 - the main GUI of the application will be grabbed.
- 0 - the main GUI won't be grabbed (default).
For example, to grab the current viewport together with the main GUI, you should specify the following in the command-line:
main_x86d -data_path "../" -extern_plugin AppGrabber -grabber_gui 1
Streaming Data with AppGrabber
The AppGrabber plugin can be used for streaming data to a broadcasting application.
The broadcasting application is usually implemented by using interfaces (APIs) that are provided by a developer SDK of a capture and playback card (DeckLink, for example). This application receives a video stream and processes it. For example, it can receive different video streams from different sources and mix them.
To send a video stream from the engine to such application, you can use one of the following ways:
- Export all the required functions from the broadcasting application to UnigineScript and send an image grabbed by AppGrabber to this functions each frame.
- Directly modify the source code of the AppGrabber plugin in order to use it as a base for the broadcasting application.