The beauty of Unreal Engine is its power to bring immersive worlds full of fantastic creatures and stunning landscapes to life. What you create in Unreal Engine can transport people from their couch or gaming chair into another world they can practically touch. 

However, for animators and designers building these worlds from their remote workstations, their world is anything but immersive. It can be incredibly isolating, and collaborating with your co-creators feels less like it used to when you all used to edit together in one editing suite. 

Naturally, many editors are desperately looking for a way to recreate the live collaboration experience of a pre-pandemic era, and the most obvious solution is to use our good old friend Zoom.   

We’re going to explore some common workflows that people are attempting to use to stream their editing and creation sessions live over Zoom and examine whether any of them truly meet the needs of creative teams. 

Workaround #1: Use an NDI and two separate systems 

One of the most common workarounds is going to require that you have two separate systems for it to work. One for you to run Unreal Engine on, and a second to run Zoom on. You’ll also need some additional software which we’ll cover in the breakdown. 

Step 1: Download NewTek’s Connect or Connect Pro NDI to both systems. This will create an input-output system for broadcasting Unreal Engine to Zoom. 

Step 2: Set up the NDI on your Unreal Engine system to screen monitor while you edit. 

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Download the NewTek NDI Tools package to your PC
2. Open the NDI Screen Capture application.
3. Once NDI Screen Capture is running, it will automatically begin broadcasting your screen to the network. 
4. Open Filmora and launch the project you want to broadcast.

Step 3: Open Zoom on your second system. 

Step 4: Open “Preferences” in Zoom, and locate the Video preferences menu. 

Step 5: Set the video inputs to the NewTek NDI Video stream. A broadcast of your desktop running Unreal Engine should now appear in the preview window. If it doesn’t, ensure that NDI Screen Capture is running on your other system. 

If you’ve done this successfully, you should be able to stream your editing screen live over Zoom while talking with your co-collaborators.