Whats up guys
Today we released a video called "Gamers React"
And you might not notice this, but it's actually a very special video because it's our first virtual production
Let me explain
Welcome to my chambers
We got this quarantine situation going on
We can't gather, but I can still write pieces
What can we do in that situation?
What kind of piece can we make, where people can't gather?
Well, lets do a parody of our "Visual Effects Artists React" series
Except it's video game characters talking about, I guess, what they learned from their experiences
I figured, you know what, why not learn Unreal
They put a lot of energy into making it specialized for virtual production
"Sam, why are you making a video with Unreal Engine?"
"Why not just use Cinema 4d and Octane, cause it's way higher quality?"
First off, thank you, for asking that question
There is a huge difference between making a 3D animated... helicopter
[Helicopter noises in the background]
There is a difference between a 3D animation and a virtual production
And if we wanted to make a 3D animated video, we would take a very different path
The whole point of a virtual production is to lift as many practices and techniques
From a traditional real-life film set as possible and then apply that to your virtual world
"Ya say you wanna to make a virtual production, kid?"
Well, I got the tools for you, check it out
First, we start with Unreal Engine
It's free! Wow! Holy cow! Done!
Install that on your PC
Next up, you want an iPhone
Sorry Android users, the iPhone is way better for this kind of stuff
First off, what do we got here?
Oh man, whoa, is this a facial tracking application?
Yeah
This is from Epic Games, Unreal made this
This is their official facial capture application, and it works really, really well
It lets me record all my facial expressions and translate that to a digital character
Don't judge this app by my results,
Because you still have to be good at making a really good facial rig for this to even function with
But this app is dope
This is top secret beta software, but I think by the time this video gets released this will be public
You're also going to want your iPhone
Because if you want to control your camera Unreal and Epic Games has already made a virtual camera app
"Are you psycho?"
Yes, I'm psycho, I'm psycho excited for this project
Check this out, I got a virtual camera
It's tracking all my movements with my camera
Do you see that? Look at that
This is nuts
So now I get an angle down here
Or I can get an angle up here
Do you see how crazy this is?
Cool, well that is checking two things off the list
I can take my sweet real-life acting skills and apply them
I can take my sweet real-life camera skills and apply them
"What's the last step you may ask, Sam?"
Well...
A $20 Thousand Dollar motion capture suit
[Laughter]
*A $20 Thousand Dollar motion capture suit
I love the Xsens suit, it has been working really well
These might look like actual pajamas, but trust me, you do not want to sleep in this
Basically this allows me to translate my physical body movements into the game engine and capture a performance
With all these tools though, I don't have to hand animate a single thing
It's not a virtual production if you are sitting there, like, tweaking all the stuff all day, it's like, no
"What does a production entail?"
A director, a camera man, some actors, and an environment
When I'm done wiggling my body around and moving the camera around I hit cut and it's there
The data is captured and I get to use it
"What about the environment?"
In doing a react video, in our style, well that takes place on a couch, in our studio
So thankfully recreating that was super, super easy
I needed a nice couch 3D model, but then I also needed a 3D model of our entire studio
And thankfully the guys from Leica came by our studio last year
And we got a pretty robust, full on 3D scan of our entire space
That all I had to do was optimize a little bit, for real-time, and then drop it right in
It's a little low poly, but it's okay, because we are never going, to like, fully see the studio in focus
It fits, you know, it feels like we are in the studio now
That's it, that's the whole environment
Jake: Sam Gorski, right?
One of my best friends, okay, a man of high intellect, creative passion
I really love what he is doing, with this whole, process that he is getting into
He's doing all this, to circumvent some of the problems you face as a filmmaker
I think that the thing that he didn't realize is that all these problems that he is experiencing could be solved
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Problem number 3
Sam is still very much dealing with the COVID pandemic, like everyone else in LA
Well that doesn't allow him to go out with a whole ton of people, filming a bunch of stuff, like he normally would do
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I hate to solve all the problems around here, but somebody has got to do it
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It's a beautiful thing
Green Lantern is... his limits are only his knowledge of Military history
That is his only limit
It's like, "Oh, this AA gun from 1942"
So part of the fun of the VFX Artist series is we all gather and we kind of riff on these clips that we're watching
It's not scripted, it's totally improvised, we're all just there, you know, explaining what we're seeing
So we wanted to make sure this video had a very similar feel to that
We would hop on Discord and we would basically just riff on it, for like an hour or so
I would take all that improvisation and then I would basically make a script
That was the foundation for this entire piece
Once we have our audio we would edit it, it would kind of sound like a podcast, basically
But I used that as the blueprint for everything I'm about to do
You can basically make a timeline, in Unreal, that you are going to animate all your stuff to
And you can drag in your audio tracks and see the wave-forms right here
It's pretty nuts
So now that I've got my audio files, we need our bodies to move, we need our faces to move
And then, once everyone is moving, we film it
So, I put on the motion capture suit
And then I basically Power Rangers it
And I do this, I'm literally just doing that while I'm listening
I'm syncing the stuff for each character, for the entire piece, we are just using Niko and Clint's voices
So, from there, we open up our facial capture application
Oh wow, look at me go
It looks good, but certain expressions... some break it, that's my fault here
But, now I have to do this for every take, for every character
Niko: "Sam, tell us a little about what you do" [Mouthing words]
My lip sync is really good... Why? Well, it's because I've listened to this scene like a hundred times by now
It's really hard to just drop yourself into this scene and like understand the rhythm of all the dialog
Now I've recorded a face
I can basically take that file and I drop that onto my character here
Now, we have a character talking
Once I do the body capture and then I do the facial capture
What I'm left with, is basically the equivalent of the rehearsals, so to speak
Everyone knows their places
Everyone knows their lines
We still need to whip out the camera and film the dang thing
This is my favorite part, I've taken off the motion capture suit, I'm not lip syncing anymore
I don't have any more work to do
My camera work is being transferred into the sequence
"How would you film this scene?"
Well, probably a nice punched in angle, like this
We would probably zoom out a little bit
Get maybe, like a wider shot, that has all three of us on the couch
Since I'm not key framing stuff, this is all captured
I feel like there is this really natural organic element that you get to see here
Like having this really fluid handheld camera in a virtual environment
I think it is pretty trippy to watch
And what we are left with, is a piece of footage
It's like we're offloading footage from a camera, at that point
All we need to do from there, is to take it and edit through our different camera angles
And get our cuts going
So the end product here, it's not necessarily the most 100% realistic thing
But it wasn't designed to be
We knew it wasn't going to be 100% photoreal
We knew the animation was going to be a little jankey
But the thing is, that all these things are kinda in place, now, for us to improve on it
And hopefully make it look a lot more realistic
Because there are some pretty crazy things coming out for Unreal
I want to take a moment to personally thank the guys at Unreal
Because I was able to get in touch with them, but some of them helped me step-by-step
Get a lot of this stuff built out and answering my questions
These guys are very passionate about getting stuff like this working, helping creators find and create workflows
They see the promise in this, which is
We have an opportunity here to create a new style of content
People can create things that would have been completely impossible if they had to do it on a real set
We're working towards this world, where your creativity and your film-making skills are the only things that are going to hold you back
It's not your budget, it's not what actors you can get, it's not the kind of environments and locations you can afford
It's just simply, "What's the story you're trying to tell?" and "How creative can you get with it?"
And that's pretty cool
If you guys are tired of listening to me talk about how I made this video and just wanted see it
Head on over to the Corridor channel, right now, where it is live
If you wanna see more, using these techniques
Let us know, because I would be more than happy to pump out the craziest videos for you guys
Maybe every two weeks again
Hey, don't forget to follow us on Instagram @corridordigital
And if you are really into virtual production, and wanna see what I'm up to
Because I'm posting junk all the time, head over to @mechaforce on Instagram
Where I'm pretty frequently posting pretty cool tidbits of projects like this, that we are working on
Also, if you don't want to miss cool videos like this, and you don't want to be left in the past
Using real life cameras, don't forget to subscribe