Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1527843
28 CGW J U LY • A U G U S T • S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 4 c haos recently released Ray Tracing FTW, a new short lm that takes aim at the state of VFX and lmmaking—from an artist's point of view. More than an airing of grievances, the comedic short is the rst major test for Project Arena, a virtual produc- tion toolset that has now been production-proven by vets who've worked on Justied, Avengers: Innity War, and Dune: Part Two. Inspired by classics like Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid and Once Upon a Time in the West, Ray Tracing FTW is an Easter egg-laden commentary about what holds productions back from telling great stories. While a "x-it-in-post" mentality can certainly cause prob- lems, the short argues that a return to golden-age lmmaking is only lacking real-time tools that truly let people operate in the moment. "Technology is too o‰en a distraction on set. It crashes, doesn't respond fast enough, or requires too many specialists to make it work right," said Christopher Nichols, director of special projects at the Chaos Innovation Lab and VFX supervisor/producer of Ray Trac- ing FTW. "We've been developing Project Arena to change all that, so everyone from the artist to the DP can stop thinking about the technology, and just get back to the natural rhythms of lmmaking." Project Arena is an upcoming virtual production toolset that o"ers studios a faster, simple alternative to game engines. With Project Arena, artists can move V-Ray assets and select animations to LED walls in around 10 mins, accessing real-time ray tracing with pipelines they know and trust. And because these tools are production-ready, artists can continue to utilize the same assets throughout the pro- cess (from pre to post), with no do-overs or drops in quality, mitigat- ing the need for virtual art departments. A Major Production Watching Ray Tracing FTW, you'd be hard-pressed to pinpoint Project Arena's role on the short. Instead, it worked as intended, bringing over 2 trillion polygons to the screen for three days straight, without any of the expensive crashes that people have come to ex- pect when using game engines in virtual production. Having a con- sistent, always-on system helped the team forget the tech and even pull o" 30 set-up shots during a standard 10-hour shoot day. Feeding the screen was a massive V-Ray environment of an Old West town, designed by Erick Schiele and built by The Scope with the help of KitBash3D and TurboSquid assets. The production con- tinued to use this environment on everything from all-CG establish- ing shots and tunnel sequences to the background for a physical train car set, which was able to portray nuanced details by using full ray tracing. Having detailed CG models blend seamlessly with physical sets meant director of photography Richard Crudo (Justied, American Pie) could get nearly every shot in-camera, barring a Bottleship VFX-driven train crash or two. It also meant that when sudden needs SHOWCASE RAY TRACING FTW CAN EMERGING VIRTUAL PRODUCTION TOOLS HELP SOLVE HOLLYWOOD'S VFX PROBLEM?