LED Video Wall Applied In Virtual Production

In recent years, technologies such as real-time rendering engines, motion capture technology, and human-computer interaction are increasingly mature and gradually applied in various industries and fields to lead their new upgrade. In the audiovisual service industry, these technologies cross fusion, and collision out of a different spark. The most prominent is the film and television industry, which was once come to a standstill by the pandemic. The film and television industry has turned its attention to the dazzling LED video wall, which can solve problems such as difficulties in setting up realistic scenes and personnel gatherings. It not only brings light to the troubled film and television industry but also points out the direction for the upgrading of shooting technology.

The Mandalorian in 2019 was the first time in the film and television industry to use LED screen walls instead of a traditional green screens for special effects shooting. The tidbits aroused infinite curiosity about virtual production in the industry. Some people even believed that LED display screen + virtual production was the inevitable path for the future development of the film and television industry.

What is LED wall virtual production?

LED virtual production is a technology fusion, that allows movies to be shot through LED screens instead of traditional green screens. With the help of the game engine, an LED video wall can display real-time backgrounds and visual special effects on the filming site. Virtual production based on LED display screens, tracking cameras and real-time graphics rendering will be more convenient for film and television production. When combined with remotely operable devices and workflows, providing an additional critical advantage to programs that work within security constraints. Through virtual production technology, it can achieve magnificent scenes and special effects that are difficult to achieve in real scene production at a low cost, and it has been widely applied in many blockbusters.

“Tool” is the key to completing the virtual shooting production. The importance of LED video walls in the process of virtual shooting is self-evident, and virtual reality visual effect presentation depends on it. Ultra-HD LED display screen is the medium for presenting information, and coordinate with actors’ performance in front of screens to form a set of complete shooting systems. Both two-dimensional and three-dimensional information can be presented on LED screens, which are so-called “digital assets”.In addition, real actors interact with screen content in front of the LED video wall, forming a blend of digital and non-digital information.

The use of an LED display screen presents an immersive sensory experience for the whole shooting scene. The post-production team will no longer have to spend time on green screen cutouts and will be able to capture footage from all over the world in a virtual studio. Creating a large-scale scene expansion that matches the LED background scene, which can be seamlessly connected in case the scene of the LED screen is not enough to fill the camera viewfinder. Dynamic AR augmented reality seamlessly integrates content that needs to be moved in front of the actor into the LED background.

The reason why LED wall virtual production is so popular in the virtual production field, even become the pronoun of virtual production is the technical support of computer graphics and unreal engine, etc, making the real-time interaction of digital information and none-digital information, digital imaging and realistic character can reach the level of extremely smoothly, so that blurs the boundary of virtual and reality.

However, LED display screens to have some limitations. In virtual film production based on the LED video walls, the issues such as pixel pitch, CRI, moire, panel reflection, control system, etc are important factors affecting virtual shooting. The LED screen we selected needs to overcome these problems. Therefore, fine pitch LED display is more suitable for high-definition display shooting. Curved LED video walls are selected to increase the available shooting angles to avoid color bias. Adjusting the distance and angle between the camera lens and the screen can effectively reduce the impact of Moorish lines on it. For the reflected light, the problem can be avoided to a certain extent by supplementing the digital lighting matrix lighting. At present, many tops LED display suppliers have been able to achieve the production and application of LED screens in line with the technical requirements of virtual shooting, and the “tool” is no longer a big problem.

Top 6 Skills of Virtual Background LED Screen Shooting

In general, LED display screen + virtual production has revolutionized the traditional film and television shooting production process, including remote cooperation, real-time visualization, connecting virtual and reality, and creating reusable digital (virtual) assets. Compared with the previous film-making technology, LED wall virtual production has the advantages of immersive experience, real-time interaction and high precision, etc. In front of the LED video wall, actors can blend in with their surroundings in real-time, so as to better engage in their performance. And in the process of technological development in recent years, LED display screen is used more and more frequently. Hollywood’s new films, Batman and Thor have also adopted the technology and are scheduled to be released in 2022. The filming of China’s popular online drama “The Beginning” also used the LED screen. With this trend, it makes sense that virtual production technology will become the new favorite for film and television filming because of its high efficiency and cost-effectiveness. In addition, with the rapid iteration and update of photography technology, dynamic tracking, and LED display technology, it is possible that virtual production based on LED volumes will be popularized in the future.

Wide application of LED virtual production

At present, there have been many LED screen suppliers involved in the development of related technologies, such as the LED display screen + virtual production technology launched by Galaxyavi Systems, the shooting technology based on motion capture technology and fine pitch LED display, LED virtual technology in many movies, games, has been applied. Look around, the “relationships” between LED screen and the film industry is not only in the production field. LED display technology has been involved in the whole industry chain.

XR LED display

In the cinema screening section, LED film screen also showed the edge.LED display to reach the use level of the movie level LED film screen, there is also a related technical certification – DCI certification.This is a great progress for the LED display industry, but also marks the LED film screen breakthrough technical barriers, relying on the spirit of independent research and development to the world stage of great progress.

Virtual production: A variety of technology fusion achievement visual feast

If the appearance of the American TV series Mandalorian is a watershed for the virtual production process of film and television, then before the appearance of Mandalorian, the related technologies of virtual production in film and television production mostly existed in the form of computer special effects, which is a tool to serve the traditional film creation.

To achieve virtual shooting, a camera and LED video wall alone is far from enough, including a variety of new technology cross fusion, such as human-computer interaction, real-time rendering, motion capture technology, etc., its role can not be underestimated.

Real-time rendering

Virtual film production technology based on the volume LED screens is based on real-time rendering, which requires the virtual scene to render the picture in real-time with the motion of the real camera and the interactive control of the user. Many years ago, virtual film production based on green-screen applied real-time renderings to live previews. With the progress of rendering technology and the improvement of rendering effect, real-time rendering technology can ensure that the LED screen picture and lighting effect of virtual film production sites are more realistic.

Human-computer interaction technology

Human-computer interaction technology includes the control of virtual scenes and the combination of virtual and real interaction. Virtual scene control refers to the ability of the creator to edit the virtual scene in real-time during the shooting, and carry out VR scene surveys, edit and determine the camera position with the help of virtual reality equipment. The dynamic information in the shooting scene is transmitted to the virtual scene in real-time by the sensor to realize the virtual matching. These interaction methods greatly improve the degree of virtual and real combination of LED screens in virtual film production. The integration of these technologies can better optimize and enlarge the shooting effect of LED display screens + virtual production.

As a new production technology, virtual production based on LED display screens has been preliminarily applied in the shooting of film and television series. But there are still many limitations and deficiencies. The future development direction needs to be explored and studied from the aspects of both software and hardware systems. It is believed that virtual shooting based on LED screens will be increasingly popular in the future, and will be further combined with the future film and television artificial intelligence production, cloud production, big data, and other emerging technologies, so as to realize the transformation of film and television industrialization.LED display screen will set off in the film and television industry.

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