After a short flight from Madrid to Geneva and meeting our lovely Artanim mates, the first step was to scan all the actors with more than 80 cameras, to capture every inch of their bodies. Steve Galache (known for his work on The Vampire in the Hole, 2010; El cosmonauta, 2013; and Muertos comunes, 2004) Jonathan David Mellor (known for The Wine of Summer, 2013; Refugiados, 2014; and [Rec]², 2009) and Almudena Calvo were the main characters of this first experience. The scanning process of the actors can be seen in the Image 1. They were dressed the same way as in the shooting scene.

While some actors were being scanned, the rest of them started to practice their texts supervised by Ignacio Lacosta, the director of this cinematography piece. Ignacio gave them some directions, recommendations, and pieces of advice to adapt “traditional acting” (like the ones on the stage of a theater) into an appropriate acting for this different environment, with all the virtual reality aspects, as seen in the Image 2.

In our second day of shooting in Geneva, the whole chroma background was set up. After a couple of rehearsals under the supervision of Ignacio, everything was prepared to start the shooting. An amazing team of cameras, electrical technicians, producer and stylist and other incredible workers were behind this experience making sure that the shooting was going perfectly. Not only that, the level of professionalism was incredibly huge, so we could record everything that we wanted sooner than it was planned.

The main point of the third day was the motion capture shooting, used to record the movement of the actors and the objects that they used in this scene. The Image 4 shows the capture of the movement with a special suit that allowed to track actors motion in the scene. Thus, all of the scenes of the pilot were repeated, but this time with no chroma background. Once again, there weren’t any problems during the shooting and the work was finished sooner than it was expected!

It was an incredible experience and we had a blast. That’s why we want to thank our Artanim mates for their hospitality and professionalism, as well as the actors and all the technical team that made possible this first pilot of the VR Together project.

Remember that if you want to keep up with updates about the project on social media, you can follow the hashtag #VRTogether_EU on every social website and the @VRTogether_EU official Twitter profile.

Who we are

Entropy Studio is a post-production company recognized within the advertising and film community. Since its constitution in 2003, Entropy Studio has made some of the most award-winning spots, films and VR experiences in Spain, also achieving International awards.

More than fifteen years of quality and innovation have established Entropy Studio as a recognised Studio for visual effects, design, animation, VFX, mattepaint, steresoscopy, motion graphics creation and in general all services related to postproduction and visual effects for both film and advertising.

In 2008, the first feature made entirely in Digital Cinema, “Magic Journey to Africa”, takes Entropy Studio at the forefront of stereoscopic visual effects produced in Europe. With Entropy Studio Corp in Los Angeles the company grows, with stunning productions as ZERO, QUANTUM BREAK or Campfire Creepers.

Come and follow us in this VR journey with i2Cat, CWI, TNO, Future Lighthouse, CERTH, Artanim, Viaccess Orca, Entropy Studio.

This project has been funded by the European Commission as part of the H2020 program, under the grant agreement 762111.

VRTogether: website, Twitter.

Text and pictures: Guillermo Calahorra – Entropy Studio

The post First shooting in Geneva: pilot 1 appeared first on VRTogether.

The photos below show the iPhone X holding rig, and an early version of the face tracking recording tool that was developed by Artanim. The tool integrates with full body and hands motion capture technology from Vicon to allow the simultaneous recording of body, hands and face performance from multiple actors.

With the recent surge of consumer virtual reality, interest for motion capture has dramatically increased. The iPhone X and ARKit SDK from Apple integrate depth sensing and facial animation technologies, and are a good example of this trend. Apple’s effort to integrate advanced face tracking to their mobile devices may be related to the recent acquisition of PrimeSense and FaceShift. The former was involved in the development of the technology powering the first Kinect back in 2011, the latter is recognized for their face tracking technology, which is briefly showcased in the making of Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer. These are exciting times, when advanced motion tracking technologies are becoming ubiquitous in our life.

Text and pictures: Henrique Debarba – Artanim

The post New venues for capturing facial performance appeared first on VRTogether.