Definition August 2024 - Newsletter

PRODUCTION FALLOUT

THE SCENE REQUIRED A lighting change MID- SHOT, FROM dusk to night ”

environments, one of which depicted an ersatz virtual environment system purportedly created with fifties tech. Built to give the dwellers of an underground refuge the impression of open skies, the system would project images of the natural world as a background to a subterranean field full of real crops. Sciutto describes it as ‘the wedding scene in the cornfield within Vault 33’. He adds: “The scene required a dynamic lighting change mid-shot, transitioning from dusk to nighttime, which was initiated by a narrative line from the Overseer. “Since we had two existing lighting set-ups – one for sunset and one for night – it was as easy as animating the moon asset to rise while transitioning between the two lighting environments,”

Sciutto reveals. “It was a great example of how VP can allow that kind of real-time environmental change.” Different techniques were called for when the projection system was required to fail during a scene Sciutto calls ‘the battle between Vault 33 and the surface dwellers’. “We incorporated a film-burn effect on the LED walls when the projectors were hit by gunfire. Our Houdini team built this effect based on research into the burning patterns of fifties film stock,” he explains. VP displays often have huge overall resolution, and Sciutto’s team had to build the necessary assets with that in mind. “Creating this imagery to spread across a dozen 4K outputs simultaneously through Unreal was challenging,” he recalls, “but

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