Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1400113
-During the design reviews and on-screen virtual scouts that use Unreal Engine, the vendors need a good "driver" to dolly, pan, boom, and tilt during virtual scouts while using a camera with the correct backplane and lens specifi cations. The DP should be enabled to pre- light the sets interactively in 3D with a "lighting TD," who can cycle skies and lighting scenarios in real-time. -Virtual scouts in actual VR (i.e., with the director, designer, and DP all wearing goggles and being in the same virtual space) can be either helpful or distracting. It all depends on the scout team's tolerance for being in a virtual space and scout protocols. Therefore, the Art Director must carefully choreograph these sessions with a technical assistant to debug and calibrate the virtual interactions during the scout. -For some designers, a beautifully rendered image distracts from their criteria, and the Unreal Engine's photorealistic bells and whistles are unnecessary. In that case, we used ambient occlusion and fl at-shaded scenes for quick scale and proportion checks. Maya was still our initial scene assembler before we moved the assets into Unreal Engine. Therefore, the Maya-UE data transfer should be bidirectional since we should expect consistent round tripping at the beginning of the design process. -To explore the build and digital set dependencies, the Virtual Art Department should have access to a detailed 3D model of the built LED wall (Volume). The relation of the built set contained inside the LED stage to the screens has two aspects: one is the appearance of physical continuity at the ground and ceiling level, the other, the correspondence between physical elements and their digital twins. Similar to classical VFX, the same physical set areas can also appear in CGI shots. This time, though, it has to happen in camera on the LED screen, so the digital building schedule is tighter. On The Mandalorian, we tested several LED wall C. LED STAGE (VOLUME VARIANTS) RELATION TO THE BUILD AND DIGITAL ELEMENTS. NOTE THAT THE TWO LED VOLUMES COVER OVERLAPPING AREAS WITHIN THE ENVIRONMENT. C VOLUME VARIANT 1 VOLUME VARIANT 2