When we look at films like the Lion King or pretty much any Hollywood blockbuster, we can see how advanced our ability to simulate or replicate reality has become. As humans, we can now visualise any story that we want to tell, and production technologies and talented VFX artists will make them truly hyper-realistic and believable.
Traditionally these methods are naturally time consuming — and understandably so — graphics and detail of this nature are hard to achieve without vast amounts of painstaking human effort. There have however been some dramatic developments in what we call ‘virtual production’, which is allowing film makers to accelerate VFX and post production, and increase productivity, flexibility and creativity in the process.
Virtual production is essentially a non-linear production process. This means that instead of shooting something and then developing the post production and VFX after the fact, filmmakers can now visualise the entire scene live. So a director can essentially direct their live action actor, 3D character and environment, all in-camera. For film making — this is a game changer.
However these technologies are not exclusive to Hollywood, nor have they originally been developed with this use case in mind. ‘Real-time 3D’ or ‘Real-time rendering’ is a technology that has been pioneered by the gaming sector, and most notably Epic games and Unity technologies, who through the development and advancements of their real time 3D render engines, have unleashed a new dawn of creativity, productivity and efficiency.
When applied to the business world, these technologies can be equally transformative. In October 2019, Unity commissioned Forrester Consulting to explore applications of real-time 3D outside of the video game sector, specifically with regards to industrial use cases across the lifecycle of physical products and buildings. They found that while only 19% of respondents have adopted real-time 3D today, most (55%) say they will have adopted it within two years. And, 94% of those whose firms have adopted today plan to expand their adoption going forward.
We at Artificial Artists apply these technologies to advertising and communications, to help our clients better engage and connect with their audiences. We are conscious that whilst all this ‘tech’ sounds great — knowing how to adopt it, or how to integrate it within existing workflows is not easy, and can take a while. Our aim is to simplify this process, and make it as seamless and painless as possible.
One way we achieve this is via 3dctrl; our virtual production studio in the cloud. 3dctrl enables artists (with no background or experience in 3D) to quickly and easily build and design 3D animated content. Brands can use 3dctrl as a 3D asset management system, that can then be harnessed to create and deploy video for social, e-commerce or digital advertising.
The user experience is super simple and modular; pick a 3D asset, choose an environment, create an animation, animate your camera. What used to take months in VFX studios can now be made in minutes in-house, and all in the browser!
To understand more about how to adopt real-time 3D technologies successfully within your business, or to receive a demo of 3dctrl, our virtual production studio, please visit www.3dctrl.com and get in touch.
