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NEW CAPTURE FEATURE
© David Yiu
SPACE RACE Volumetric capture is in its infancy but Microsoft and Intel are leading the land grab with new studios and new customers
which can be anything from a golfer swinging to a dancer pirouetting, and place it in 2D space for commercials and maybe drama. But the real purpose of volumetrics is to create digital humans who look and act like real ones when placed in immersive content. Other ways of creating digital humans involve CGI built around performance capture, which is open to the ‘uncanny valley’ weirdness that we’ve all seen. Large corporations, including Microsoft and Intel, are already practising the art of volume recording. Microsoft has built three volumetric studios, two in the USA
WORDS JULIAN MITCHELL
moves in a live action style via a conventional dolly or other camera platform. Of course, they still have all the tools of CG and the feel of analogue live action operating and camera movement. But in this exciting new world of capture there are other ways of achieving a pathway into the digital world. If you haven’t heard about volumetric capture, it is a way of capturing true 3D video that you can watch from any angle. We’re really talking here about creating a hologram but one you can insert into VR, AR, 3D or even 2D programming. You can then take your sequence,
hen the VFX Oscar-winning The Jungle Book arrived on our screens a couple of years ago, we were amazed
at how realistic the digital recreation of our world was. Currently The Lion King is being given the same live capture treatment and the entire toolset is being revamped again for virtual cinematography, to include at its base, VR. The production team are creating the set, animation, puppeteering, lighting and virtual camera and are able to walk around in the set as if it were real. They can even capture Steadicam, handheld, dolly and crane
THE REAL PURPOSE OF VOLUMETRICS IS TO CREATE DIGITAL HUMANS WHO ACT LIKE REAL ONES PLACED IN IMMERSIVE CONTENT
ABOVE Dimension Studios in London has licensed the Microsoft mixed media technology for volumetric capture.
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MAY 2018 DEFINITION
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