>>Hi, my name is Phillip Galler and this
is the new offices of Lux Machina in downtown Los Angeles.
Some of the things that we're going to show you today
include camera tracking with Live Link,
set extension tools, we're going to look at nDisplay.
We're going to look at an iPad control,
live compositing using green screen,
in-camera visual effects,
beautiful lighting and organic reflections.
Last but not least, we're going to be talking with Magnopus
about the virtual scouting tools that are in Unreal Engine 4.
And before I throw you over to Magnopus,
let me introduce a few of the other people we have here today
and we've got Matt Workman. he's our GP.
You've got Matt Madden from Profile,
AJ and Fernando from Magnopus,
and Quixel, who designed this beautiful scene
you see behind me using some Megascan Assets.
>> I'm AJ Sciutto, Virtual Production Producer
from Magnopus. This is Fernando Rebelo,
our Virtual Production Tech Operator for Magnopus.
Magnopus has used our virtual production expertise
to design a VR scouting toolset directly in Unreal 4.23.
And what this toolset allows you to do
is to pre-scout your environment before you even hit stage.
We have a Director's Viewfinder that allows him or her
to see what the world looks like through their camera.
The Measuring Tool is for production designers
and the art department
to determine how big these worlds are going to be.
We also have a Set Dressing Tool to grab
and move pieces of the environment
to help compose the shot.
So, as you can see from Fernando's view here,
everything he sees in his headset
is happening live on the wall in real-time.
So, Fernando, I think we want to keep that space open.
So, let's go ahead and fly that rock out of here.
>> Hey, my name is Matt Workman
and I'm the cinematographer on this project.
My philosophy when I'm shooting in this volume
is that I want to treat this
like I'm shooting in the real world.
And this is enabled by two concepts.
The first is that when we move the real-world camera,
this virtual world here is going to shift perspective
to give the effect like we're in a real location.
And the second concept that enables this is
that we are surrounded by the virtual world
and the virtual world
is going to light the real world space here.
Right now, I'm being completely illuminated
by the screen surrounding me.
So today we're shooting with the ARRI ALEXA LF,
which is a large format cinema camera.
And this is going to give us a lot of great shallow depth
of the field which is helping us out in this case
because we want to in general keep the background
a little bit out of focus to avoid Moray.
So Matt Madden, could you turn on our Frustum please?
So, if you look through the camera,
we actually have the parallax effect happening,
but if we look back at the wall,
we have an image inside of the bigger image here
and we're essentially tracking the field of view of the camera.
As I move side to side, you can see that the virtual
background is moving back there and as we go higher,
we will see that the horizon is shifting as well.
So, both of these effects combined to give us
the impression
that we're actually shooting in a real-world location.
>> My name is Matt Madden
and I am the Virtual World Supervisor here.
Now Matt mentioned that the virtual world
is lighting the physical set, as you can see here.
And our primary source here is actually the sky,
much like the real world. So if I change the sky
only you can see I'm not only changing the physical set,
I'm actually changing the virtual world too.
Not only is this interactive,
but it ensures that we have a match between the physical world
and the digital world, which is super important
when you're trying to create realistic imagery.
If I've created a setup that I really like and want to save,
I can easily go back to a template
and now we're back to where we started.
So, looking at this environment, it looks pretty good,
but one area I do you want to call to your attention
is the intersection between the physical world and the CG world.
You can see if you look through the camera,
it blends pretty nicely
and that didn't happen by accident.
We actually have some really powerful set extension tools
in Unreal
to make sure that we have a nice even blending
between the physical world and the CG world
and our lead artist Juan Gomez is going to tell us
a little bit more about how that works.
>> Thank you, Matt.
I am an Unreal Engine Stage Operator.
This instance of Unreal, the same as the one
next to me VR scouting and the three render nodes
are part of the multi user session.
At any time, we can make any change.
As you guys were seeing when Matt was changing
the lighting on set, I need to be able
to quickly adjust the value of the CG ground
and rocks in order to match.
They're going to be showing you how quickly I can change hues
and saturations until we get a close match.
And for areas where I need to have
a more fine-tuned control like this area over here,
we see a dark shadow on the practical set.
I want to enable our Color Correction Volumes.
As you can see it just turn on the purple sphere
in the middle of the set.
I can move that anywhere I want to do some color adjustments.
I'm going to put it in that corner,
I'm going to reset back the values
and I'm going to make it slightly darker.
Looking better. I'm going to show you off and on.
As you can see with this kind of tools
I can go into specific areas
and adjust the seamless transition.
Matt Workman, back to you.
>> Great. So now we're going to do a shot
and we're going to move from overcast lighting into sunset.
So Matt Madden,
could you grab me a good-looking sunset sky?
>> I can easily do that just by loading a preset
that I have for the sunset option and there we go.
>> So, this is the right tone and the right mood,
but we're still looking towards these rocks
so it's a little bit dark.
Could you find us a better viewpoint
so we can see more of the sky?
>> Sure thing.
So now I'm just going to rotate the whole world,
the sky and the landscape. How's that look, Matt?
>> That's better. Definitely. We have a better view of the sky
and so we've rotated the actual magic part
of magic hour out of the scene. And can we spin the sky back
so that we can still have some of the bright pink.
So, I'm spinning the sky only now relative
to the rest of the world.
>> That looks great. Can you show us
some of the virtual lighting options we have?
>> If we need to supplement
the light that's coming from the sky itself,
I have a library of different light sources that I can apply
as an additive light to the skylight.
So, I just picked a circle here.
You can see it's big and white right now
and I'm going to put a little transparency on there.
Maybe add a little bit of an orangish hue
to match the general tone of the sunset.
Maybe take out some saturation a little bit
that's a little too orange or red on the face.
And then I'm going to wrap this around to the side.
So, it's illuminating our actor's face.
And this is where I rely on feedback from the DP
to make sure the lighting is just the way they want.
So Matt, what do you think? How's this feeling?
>> Can we see it all the way up and then off and on?
>> Okay. That's all the way up
and I'll give you a quick toggle here
>> I think on is the way to go.
Can we add a little bit more ambient light to the scene?
>> Yes, because I have independent control
of the different panels in terms of exposure.
I'll go ahead and lift the exposure of the ceiling.
In this case we're up about a half stop.
>> That looks great.
Can we just do a little bit more?
>> There's a full stop.
Also, if I want, I can warm up that light
since we have a little bit of blue on the ceiling there.
So, we have the ability to independently
adjust the color temperature as well.
>> Great. This is looking good.
So, we're going to do an actual shot now.
So, Vinnie if you could step off for one second.
So, in this shot,
Vinnie is going to start with his sunglasses off.
He's going to get on the bike and put them on
and we want to pay attention to the sunglasses
because they have a little bit of translucency.
So, we'll be able to see through them
and they have some reflection in them.
And then we're going to end in an in-camera lens flare
on the headlight of the bike.
And action.
>> So, Juan, can you go ahead and take it to the redwoods, please.
>> You got it.
>> We're going to take you to a completely new environment
in about 90 seconds. Imagine if you had to re-dress
your entire practical set in that time.
By the time you're even half done getting rid of this dirt,
you'll be virtually scouting in a new location.
You'll be setting up lighting and it's important to remember
we're not just taking you to another part of the same scene.
We're taking you to a completely new environment all in CG,
all in real-time.
We use nDisplay to seamlessly add additional render nodes
and talk to additional displays,
seam them all back together so that everything is in sync.
In a real production volume, we might have something
that's three, four, five times the size.
In this current configuration,
we have three separate render nodes.
Each with a 4K output all seamed back together
in the center of the wall.
The center-left and the side screen are one render node,
the center-right and this right wall,
are one node and the ceiling is one node.
As you can see, it seamlessly scales
and as we add more display fixtures,
we can add more render nodes.
With that, let's talk a little bit about this environment.
This environment was purchased off the Marketplace
and it may not be perfect for in-camera finals for every shot,
but it'll definitely work for organic lighting
or organic reflections.
>> There are definitely times in production
where you have an asset that's not quite ready for prime time.
If you look at the talent and the live set,
this has fantastic lighting and reflections
that we can get out of the virtual set
even in the current form.
It's really just the background we're talking about
that might not make the cut. If you run into that situation,
we can easily throw a green screen in front of it
and also add tracking markers for posts.
So, we have the benefit of getting all this wonderful
live action lighting
and also the safety of being able to do a composite in post.
Simultaneously, we can do a live composite of this current
CG asset over the green, so the director and the DP
can still compose the shot as if the assets were really there.
So, if you look closely at the bike again
and the sunglasses, you still have all these great reflections
in lighting on the bike and the set.
Even with the green screen background,
you're still preserving that realism,
but you also have the ability to go back to a composite in post
if you need to.
>> Thanks for joining us.
Lux Machina wants to invite everyone to come back later
on in the year, continue collaborating
on in-camera visual effects, workflows,
and look at new opportunities for using Unreal Engine 4.
Thanks for joining us and I hope y'all had a great time.
time.