THIS IS A XEON SERIES PRODUCT PROMOTIONAL VIDEO RELEASED BY INTEL THIS YEAR:
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In the film, the actors shuttle through many scenes such as alien surfaces, lakeside grasslands, forest classrooms, laboratories and so on.
As you wouldn't expect, this promo was shot in a closed studio in just 48 hours.
No film crew travel, no complicated communication; After shooting the scene in real time, change the scene immediately, and confirm the effect on the spot... In front of an LED wall, the shooting process is like flowing water, fast and efficient, but the effect is more gorgeous.
This is the revolution that "Virtual Production" has brought to the imaging industry.
Since "The Mandalorian" demonstrated the technology of shooting based on LED background in 2019, "virtual shooting" has become a hot "innovation benchmark" in the industry, and domestic teams have begun to explore and try technology in the past two years, and a number of new studios including LED screens have been built.
And there is a team that came up with a mature solution as early as two years ago, and in the past 2022, silently produced more than ten LED-based virtual production landing commercial works for head customers.
Xianyang 2022 case mixed cut >>
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Has the era of "virtual production" arrived? What will it bring to the film and television content industry?
Today, we will take you to learn about "Xianlang Film and Television", the team with the earliest start, the longest practice, the deepest accumulation and the most cases in the field of real-time rendering film and television production in China, reveal their "virtual production methodology", and listen to how this group of "virtual production veterans" view the development prospects of virtual production.
What benefits does virtual production technology bring to film and television crews?
As one of the earliest teams in China to enter the field of virtual production, after serving nearly 100 customers such as film and television, advertising, live performance, and games, Xianyang Film and Television has summarized the core advantages of virtual production technology: reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
△ LED studio panorama
While virtual production means increased costs for on-set technical equipment (especially LED screens) and technical teams, it also brings a number of obvious benefits to the crew:
- The art assets and visual effects team intervened in the creation and design in the early stage, and greatly improved the communication efficiency and reduced the difficulty of decision-making during the creation period through virtual previews.
- Through the real-time engine, "what you see is what you get" is realized on the shooting site, which gives the film team great creative flexibility, and at the same time greatly increases the "film ratio" (that is, the proportion of final used materials to all shooting materials), avoiding a lot of waste after start-up;
- Based on the LED background wall, virtual and real synchronous camera, and on-site real-time rendering shooting, the natural integration of front and rear lighting can be completed in the studio with the shortest shooting time, and the lens light and shadow effects comparable to the on-site shooting can be saved, saving a lot of external shooting and post-visual effects costs;
Taking a TVC by Corolla as an example, the film involves three main scenes with different styles: snowy mountains and snowy wilderness, camping deep in the jungle, and night scenes on city roads, and requires at least three weeks of location real shooting and a lot of post-work in the traditional production process.
In the virtual production process adopted by Xianlang, the team completed all the shooting in the LED studio within two days through more than a week of pre-asset preparation, on-screen test rehearsal, and communication with the main creative team.
At the same time as the finalization, the crew has obtained nearly 90% of the final material of the finished film.
But these benefits can not be achieved simply by setting up an LED screen on the shooting site.
Behind the LED screen on the scene is a large number of technical integration applications, close cooperation between technology and the creative team, and subversive reconstruction of the overall production process of the film.
In other words, when the producer chooses to use the "virtual production process" to produce a film and television work, what he chooses is not "a set of on-site shooting solutions including LED background", but a complete set of "virtual production industrial production process".
Virtual production is not only LED, but also an innovative process of film and television industrialization based on real-time rendering technology
In Xianyan's view, "The Mandalorian" is just a sign that virtual production technology has widely entered the industry's vision, and as early as 2009's "Avatar 1", James Cameron has used virtual production technology a lot.
△ Avatar virtual preview shooting site
ACCORDING TO AUTODESK'S 2011 WHITE PAPER, VIRTUAL PRODUCTION IS DEFINED AS A VISUAL COLLABORATIVE PROCESS BUILT THROUGH THE FUSION OF COMPUTER CG CONTENT AND LIVE SHOTS THROUGHOUT THE FULL CYCLE OF PRE-PRE-PRODUCTION CREATION, MID-SHOOTING, AND POST-PRODUCTION.
The real technical explosion of virtual production stems from the development of real-time rendering engines represented by UNREAL Unreal Engine.
The engine's "real-time rendering" feature allows digital assets to be implanted in the early, mid, and late stages of video production and used to optimize the process, greatly improving the efficiency of communication and collaboration of creation.
From digital assets and scene construction, to shooting preview, to on-site production, the entire filming process can be "full process real-time". This has revolutionized the traditional image production process.
△ In April this year, Unreal Engine 5 was officially released, and computer 3D image processing entered a "new era"
This is also the strength of the Xianlang film and television team to be able to call itself a "veteran":
The core team members of Xianlang have entered the field of real-time rendering content production since 2015, and have created a film and television virtual production process with real-time rendering content as the core.
△ In 2015, Xianyang proposed the "whole process of a new generation of virtual production"
Xianlu has the industry's scarce full-stack independent research and development capabilities that combine algorithms, hardware, software and processes;
Full-stack real-time rendering virtual content production solutions and products with independent intellectual property rights;
In many fields such as virtual and real image synchronization, positioning capture, mixed reality presentation, and LED virtual shooting, Xianyang has a number of key patents and soft writings.
In the past 10 years of development, Xianyang has led almost every important milestone in the development of domestic virtual production and real-time rendering content technology.
△ Past milestone cases
These constitute the absolute leading technical strength and core competitiveness of Xianyang in China, laying a solid foundation for the smooth execution of commercial projects of virtual production.
When it comes to the application scenarios of virtual production in the film and television content industry, Xianyang believes that the LED background wall is only one of the eye-catching application scenarios of virtual production, and may become the standard for high-quality TVC and some film and television works in the short term.
Based on the technical advantages of the real-time rendering engine, the "cost reduction and efficiency increase" of virtual production technology is more reflected in: through visual and interactive real-time rendering content, through the through-type process management in the front, middle and later stages of film and television shooting.
For example, in the film industry, engine-based virtual previews have become the standard for Hollywood blockbusters, and the Xianlang team has also provided virtual preview technical services for many theatrical films, which has greatly improved the efficiency of film production.
△ Xianyang Film has provided virtual preview technical support for a number of domestic theatrical films
△ The opera movie "Wedding on the Execution Ground" is the first film in China that uses the engine for virtual rehearsal and real-time on-site monitoring
△ 2020's "Big City Building" is China's first theatrical film that uses LED backgrounds for live shooting
Based on the relevant technologies of virtual and real synchronous cameras, green screen real-time synthesis and on-site monitoring, in some projects, the purpose of "reducing costs and increasing efficiency" of virtual production can not necessarily be achieved through LED background walls.
For example, the virtual performance of the five-piece band at Zhihu's "New Knowledge Youth Conference";
or the virtual and real synthesis effect of the "fantasy train" of the fashion brand Carbine;
In the field of stage performance, through the combination of virtual production and XR technology, very cool live effects can be achieved;
△ The AR stage of CCTV's variety show "Very Legendary" presents a visual spectacle and is beautiful
△ The trailer of the "combination of virtual and real" finals of Tencent's "Peace Elite" turned the stage into a blood-boiling arena
However, even with such deep technical accumulation and business service experience, the veterans of the Xianlang team still do not believe that virtual production has entered a "mature period" of large-scale promotion and replication in the industry.
Because the foundation of film and television content is personalized artistic creativity, there is currently no one-size-fits-all whole-process solution.
They say that if you want to push the film and television content industry to truly move towards the era of virtual production, it is not enough to rely on technological development.
In the era of virtual production, the spread of technology and processes requires industry-wide participation
Every year, Xianyang will do a "limit test" based on the technical upgrade of the engine and self-developed products:
In the self-owned LED studio, multiple sets of positioning equipment, various virtual and real synchronous cameras, large-scale digital assets, virtual production systems... At the same time, the linkage test is carried out under extreme conditions, and engineers engage in on-site research and development, upgrading the workflow to ensure the stability of commercial projects.
In 2020, Xianyang Film and Television produced the first LED-based virtual shooting technology test film in China:
Such a test is not only to verify the limits of the technology, but also to explore how virtual production technology can better serve artistic creativity, and what new tricks can be played in the virtual studio.
Because for most domestic directors, director of photography and other main creators, the relevant technology of virtual production is still unfamiliar, how to use these technical tools well, most people lack enough practical experience, and even need a technical team to produce sample shots.
So the recent distress of this group of "technology veterans" is:
After shooting a whole year of LED virtual production projects, it was found that from the virtual scene to the lens design to the way of camera movement, there was some homogenization trend - most of the main creators of the project will basically use the more stable shooting scheme and routines verified in the test on the spot, although it can be recognized by customers, but for virtual production technology, there is obviously more potential to be tapped.
Because virtual production is not only a technical tool, but also an innovative process for the transformation of film and television industrialization.
Therefore, this kind of innovation must be worked by artists and technical geeks to continuously expand the boundaries of virtual production at the artistic and creative level, until virtual production becomes not only a tool for "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", but also a wing that can drive film and television content to the next era.
One of the "veterans" said frankly:
We hope that more directors and clients will come and take risks with us and do something more imaginative so that we can better explore the possibilities of virtual production and real-time rendering of content.
Our R&D team is focused on the site for each project, and we will be very happy to see that the artists have put forward new technical needs for us.
△ The pioneer team on the shooting site
In the future, Xianyang wants to be a "virtual studio" for the film and television industry
Technological innovation brings about changes in production processes, upgrades in solutions, and re-architecture in service methods.
On the basis of years of practice accumulation, Xianyang took the lead in putting forward the concept of "virtual studio".
The idea is that technology serves the output of ideas.
"Full-process real-time" requires the technical side to have the thinking and ability of production, form a process and template of "creative visual processing and production", and efficiently and high-speed output of good content that required huge resources in the past.
Although virtual production can save money in every link, only by considering how to use it from the perspective of "production" can we achieve the maximum cost performance and truly achieve "cost reduction and efficiency increase".
Xianlang's next step is to build a "virtual studio" to standardize the overall industrialization process of virtual production, so that advanced technology can maximize the value in business.
This standardized process is particularly suitable for the shooting and production of sci-fi genre films, whereby Xianlang proposes the concept of "sci-fi virtual producer", and well-known sci-fi writers and screenwriters in the United Nations create exclusive sci-fi film and television IP for streaming media platforms based on virtual production and digital human technology.
The first instance of "sci-fi virtual production" >>
"Real-time" is the key word for the future of the content industry.
Digitalization, virtual production, virtual digital human technology has been introduced into the production in large quantities, "real-time" is like the first domino to push down the industrial change, the future has come, the potential bred by this blue ocean has been on the "eve" of the outbreak.
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