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"The solution was ... a dynamic, real-time, photo-real background played back on a massive LED video wall and ceiling ... rendered with correct camera positiona
by cbhl 7y ago
"The solution was ... a dynamic, real-time, photo-real background played back on a massive LED video wall and ceiling ... rendered with correct camera positional data."
Gee, that sounds a lot like a holodeck. We've come a long way from using Wii Sensor Bars[0] for position tracking.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC_KKxAuLQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC_KKxAuLQw
- ragebol 7y agoFor the VFX industry, the tracking had already been solved for ages, with those reflective little balls on suits etc. in a mocap system. The Wii sensor bar's thing was that it was really cheap. But yes, damn close to a holodeck. But you can't see depth in this setup, right?
- whatshisface 7y agoThey have polarized 3D screens, and with head tracking, you have it.
- rebuilder 7y agoMocap systems haven't really been able to produce deliverable results without human intervention very long. I'd argue they're still not there, some filtering and cleanup of the data is usually required. A lot of VFX is still about throwing human labour at problems. Edit: I should note I'm talking about motion capture for characters etc. Capturing the motion of a rigid object like a camera in a controlled environment is very doable.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoYou're right. The mocap data for the actor who played Thanos in Avengers had to be post processed by artist by hand since the motion of a regular man doesn't correspond to the motion of a larger and heavier Titan. I guess in a few years all that could be automated with ML.
- estebank 7y agoYou don't need ML to solve that problem, you can use inverse kinematics: https://youtu.be/KLjTU0yKS00 https://youtu.be/KLjTU0yKS00
- nocut12 7y agoIf it's perspective corrected for the camera, it would probably look very distorted for anyone else on set -- whether there's depth or not And that's certainly not the goal with this. Something along those lines has been around for a while (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...). This system seems specifically targeted for solving challenges for film production, as it probably should be. I am pretty impressed that real time rendering has gotten good enough to use for these purposes. I certainly wouldn't have expected that those backgrounds in the show were coming out of a video game engine.
- RaptorJ 7y agoFrom the video posted upthread, around 3:40 it looks like they're doing just that: https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk?t=220 https://youtu.be/gUnxzVOs3rk?t=220
- mlrtime 7y agoLook at the ceiling, you can see it moving.
- vernie 7y agoThe most interesting aspect to me is that the system is pulling double duty by displaying both a dynamic, perspective-correct backdrop for the camera's POV and a static view for environment lighting and reflections outside of the camera's view frustum. I wonder if they had to take care to mitigate artifacts caused by the dynamic view bouncing off of surfaces facing away from the camera.
- babypuncher 7y agoIt won't trick anyone with stereo vision, but the perspective correction provides all the depth cues needed to create a convincing 3D visual for pirates and non-stereo cameras.
- ragebol 7y agopirates? What arrrr you talking about?
- frostburg 7y agoEyepatches.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lsaferite 7y agoInterestingly I would imagine pulling the non-CG part out of the frame would be possible as they have the ability to generate the exact image without the real-world aspects. Basically a virtual green-screen. Combine that with a stereo camera and the fact that the source CG is actually 3D and you could get very convincing 3D movies I'd think. Yeah, that simplified a lot, but I'd say it's possible. And they still get the benefits of the lighting aspects as well as the immersion for the actors.
- modeless 7y agoThe "holodeck" version of this is called a CAVE and the first one was built in 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKL0urEdtPU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKL0urEdtPU https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...
- ci5er 7y agoThe haptics on CAVE were pretty clumsy, but boy howdy! I was pretty damn impressed when I got to interact with it at SIGGRAPH that following year. I've got to say that the NC (Chapel Hill) pixel machine may have been a more supreme technical achievement, but it was harder to "get a feel for". As a young semiconductor geek at Motorola (Tokyo Design Ops) at the time, I did push for getting 1~4 bit CPUs on every column of 128-~192- bit deep framebuffers for a time. I almost got Sega to sponsor the project, but then something distracted me (I don't know what - but I suspect it was the Motorola 96K and a bank of AMD bit-slicer chips)) and I wandered off to do something else.
- overcast 7y agoSpeaking of the Wii, does anyone else wish that motion controls could just be removed from its existing library? Not only has it just a major annoyance in most games, but its basically locked into that hardware now.
- mercer 7y agoMetroid Prime is one of the few games I've played all the way through multiple times. When it became increasingly difficult to do so on a GameCube, I relented and tried the ii U version. Much as I've tried,I can't get comfortable with the controls. Thankfully I finally have a laptop that can properly emulate the GC version and allow me to use the GC controller that I dusted off. But I can't wait for a GC-inspired version on the Switch!
- overcast 7y agoI've been procrastinating playing Metroid Prime 3 because I don't want to waggle around the whole time. Pumped for the endlessly delayed Switch version though, I've had it preordered FOREVER.