SCANNING TECH
In Italy, Schaefer spent a day in Sutri, north of Rome, scanning buildings and streets previously identified by his director. “I shot a music video there with Belinda Carlisle many years ago, so I knew the town well. It has a beautiful piazza and churches, and it seemed like the right place. You have to walk in a zig- zag pattern for the scan to work, but you can see where you’ve been thanks to a green dotted line in the display,” he says. Schaefer also captured some scans of Rome, including of the Colosseum, before heading back to LA. Having sent the raw data to Lightcraft over Wi-Fi, the scans were processed as files called Lixel CyberColor (LCC) ready for Schaefer to look at as soon as he landed. “ XGRIDS has a [Mac/PC] viewing application called LCC Viewer that lets the user navigate through an XGRIDS scan with a traditional keyboard and mouse. You can freeze frame, move within it, point to the ceiling (or sky), go left and right, or create stills from it.” With the scans exported to Jetset, a director or DOP can test shot composition with a precise simulation of a specific production camera and lens, as well as real-time tracking of the camera’s motion. “For example, they could load in the XGRIDS scan of Rome into Jetset, select a simulated camera and lens combination of an ALEXA 35 shooting at a 2:1 aspect ratio with a 32mm lens, and simply walk around their living room,” shares Mack. “Jetset will accurately track their motions inside the XGRIDS scan and show them what the view would be if they were standing in that exact portion of Rome (for example), holding that ALEXA camera and 32mm lens.”
According to Bella Wan of XGRIDS , “The K1 scans primarily capture raw LiDAR point clouds and aligned image data. A computational process called simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) is applied and then the LCC Studio software generates the 3D Gaussian splat models. These final models with natural parallax, spatial depth and RGB colour can then be exported for use in other industrial software like Jetset.” According to Schaefer, it’s a more efficient and agile form of photogrammetry which, while producing ‘extremely high resolutions’, essentially stitches thousands of stills together in a process that can be more consuming than simply walking around with a handheld scanner. XGRIDS HAS A VIEWING APP CALLED LCC VIEWER that lets the user navigate THROUGH AN XGRIDS SCAN”
Schaefer, ASC, AIC – who shot Monster’s Ball and was also the Bafta-nominated cinematographer for Finding Neverland – trialled the combination as a test for a short film under development for a director in LA. “I discovered Jetset a year ago, and it was Lightcraft founder Eliot Mack who suggested I try it out with the K1,” Schaefer says. “At the same time, I had a project to shoot in Italy, so I decided to tie the lot together and fly out to Rome.” The user’s smartphone can be attached to the K1 for real-time monitoring during the scan via a companion LixelGO app. The phone is used as a control module and viewing screen. The K1 itself has four cameras: two panoramic vision modules at 48 megapixels and two depth cameras.
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DEFINITIONMAGS
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