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Bringing VFX environments to an LED volume stage

Posted on by Thomas Hollier
Unreal displaying the environment on the LED wall of a volume stage

Relentless Play put together a presentation for Turning Point Productions to provide a big picture overview of virtual and digital workflows. Combining a 3D build of the original physical sets with the digital environment backgrounds developed for the VFX shots, we created an Unreal scene to illustrate the potential of LED walls. A big thanks to Pepe Valencia from Baraboom! for explaining how previz and techviz are used to inform the process, and to VFX Technologies for availing their stage and support to the project. It was great to see everyone come together to make it a success.

The growing adoption of USD is making this process more and more transparent, and any parts that are still not fully implemented can be addressed with python code. In this case, Relentless Play originally built the city environment for traditional offline rendering in Maya/Arnold. For this presentation, we then developed a process to convert the individual components, rebuild the maya hierarchy with a referencing pipeline, and transfer the material assignments all into a single USD stage that efficiently loaded into Unreal without any effort.

Driftwood

Posted on by Thomas Hollier

Many of the generative strategies that have been used in traditional VFX are now easily applied to electronic components. This integration provides for a much larger toolset where boundaries between physical and virtual becomes blurred, and the canvas becomes immersive rather than flat.

Beach wood, stepper motors, arduino, grout.

Video Datagrams

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Compositions featuring stacks of “chronographs” generated from digital video data. These images reveal intricacies hidden in movements and rhythms around us and through time.

Synced Video Tryptic

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Filmmaker Natasha Maidoff approached me needing a way to display synced video for a multi screen piece at the Google Art Walk. Having multiple view ports embedded into a single piece creates tension between the individual screens and adds a dynamic layer on top of what happens within the boundaries of each. I built an aluminum frame to hold the LCD screens, power supplies and networked raspberry pi computers playing back the video in sync. The whole was then mounted to the wooden frame. more…

Electronic Time Piece with Cement and Light

Posted on by Thomas Hollier

Building a binary clock is a rite of passage for artists interested in exploring electronics. There is a subversive edge in over-designing it to the extent that its alleged primary purpose becomes obfuscated until all that is left is the contemplation of mysterious patterns. My version of this endeavor involves contrasting the immateriality of light with the weight and cold smoothness of polished cement. But it DOES tell time, although by the time you’ve decoded the bits, the time will be different.

The clock's circuit board was designed with an atmel MPU, bit-shift registers to address the individual LEDs, an RTC chip to keep accurate time, and a voltage regulator.

Panoramic Photography

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Along with providing necessary data for VFX production, panoramas provide visual great datasets to explore creative uses of composition, sharpness, perspective and mood.