DEFINITION THE VIRTUAL FRONTIER
WORDS ADRIAN PENNINGTON
Artificial intelligence is transforming film and television production, and creeping inside the LED volumes of virtual studios too. While still a supporting player, AI is increasingly being used to streamline workflows and solve production bottlenecks, but not to replace real-world filmmaking
uite Brilliant, a virtual production studio in London, has begun to augment its workflows with AI tools. “Traditionally in virtual production we’ve used 3D games
In advertising production, where speed is crucial, the time savings can be significant. Quite Brilliant recently used AI-generated environments for a campaign linked to ITV’s The Birthday Draw , enabling the team to film multiple locations within a single studio shoot. “That project involved 15 different set- ups over five days,” Shaw says. “We could jump from a beach environment to a suburban street very quickly because the backgrounds were generated digitally.” GAUSSIAN SPLATS EVOLVE Veles Productions, a Warsaw-based VP services company, estimates that certain virtual sets can now be produced at a fraction of traditional costs. What once needed weeks of labour can now be achieved in hours – or even minutes – with iterative prompting. “This is not about saving a bit of time,” says CEO Artur Paprocki. “It’s an absolute game changer. If something
is ten times cheaper, there just isn’t an argument any more.” At the centre of this shift is Gaussian splatting, a technique that reconstructs 3D environments using dense point clouds derived from images or scans. Unlike traditional polygon-based modelling, it allows for fast, relatively lightweight scene generation with convincing depth and parallax. “Current AI tools are not without flaws,” he says. “There are hallucinations, perspective inconsistencies and limited animation and interactivity. Yet progress is happening at an extraordinary pace. “Tools that didn’t exist in December are available now,” notes Martynian Rozwadowski, Veles’ head of technology. “Editing, relighting, moving objects – it’s all improving.” The comparison to early generative AI models is telling. “With Gaussian splatting, we are somewhere between ChatGPT 2 and 3.5,”
engines like Unreal,” says Russ Shaw, the studio’s VP supervisor. “More recently, tools like Chaos Arena, which is a CGI- based backend using V-Ray, produces more realistic imagery. Even then, you still don’t get the exact realism you would from shooting a real plate or having a genuine environment behind the actors.” AI sits in between. He says, “It can create convincing imagery quickly and cost-effectively. You’re not getting full 3D parallax, but you are getting something that looks far more realistic than earlier game-engine approaches. “It’s really about delivering more for less,” Shaw says. “Clients want high production value, but they also want faster turnaround and tighter budgets. AI helps us meet those expectations.”
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