Satore Studio and MBS Equipment have got together to show how virtual production can be made to look so real that “even a trained professional wouldn’t know it was fake until the very end”.
In the 90-second film for agency Quite Brilliant, we see an actor in a wide range of settings, from a living room to a spacecraft, all of which look completely real and natural until the camera pulls back to to show the film crew and virtual set.
“Everything you see in the background of the demo was final pixel VFX, which is simply incredible. There are still some hurdles slowing virtual production from becoming mainstream, but if you’re clever, you can use these techniques to create something truly incredible and do it safely and with ease.”
Tupac Martir, creative director and founder, Satore Studio
Only 20% of the content creation was actually done on set, with the rest handled in pre-visualisation. Fewer than 30 people were in the studio over the two day shoot, with an average of nine active at any one time.
Satore created two background sets using Maya, Disguise, Houdini, ZBrush, and Substance, which were combined with six other scenes created by an architectural visualisation company. Scenes were optimised to run in Unreal Engine at 25fps and rendered in Renderman, Octane and Arnold. Ncam was used for tracking Arri SXT footage of the actor in relation to the lighting, background and props, and this was then blended with the CGI into one in-camera mix. Since everything was done in real-time and in-camera, the director and DoP were able to make creative decisions as they worked.
Source: Broadcast