Audiomotion, in collaboration with Digital Domain, helped Steven Spielberg create new virtual world movie Ready Player One.

Filming consisted of 5 weeks set up and rehearsals followed by eight weeks of motion capture at Warner Bros. Leavesden studios.
 
Two mocap stages, and a total of 204 Vicon Vantage V16 cameras were used to bring the film’s ‘OASIS’ virtual world to life. The main stage was used for the Full performance capture, with a second adjustable stage setup used to capture the stunt performers and wire-work which was required for the more elaborate action scenes. This stage adopted the use of moveable towers, allowing the mocap volume to be changed according to what was captured.
 
Audiomotion also provided a VR volume for Spielberg, used to review the preferred takes at the end of the day. This allowed him to make notes and adjustments to camera set ups and angles using a VR Toolset. Due to the vast number of actors involved in the production a separate ROM volume was also created, allowing Audiomotion to prep actors separately to the main production, maintaining a continuous running schedule without interruptions. Audiomotion worked across the whole pipeline, starting from capture, tracking and retargeting, through to scene prep and layout for a daily review in the VR environment.
 
“Spielberg is known for embracing technology and Virtual Production opens up a whole new way of working. The challenge for us was to capture the performance and work the animation through several pieces of software to end up with a fully rendered scene within a game engine for the Director to review. We use these features in our day to day work, but RPO really pushed the boundaries.” said Brian Mitchell, Managing Director of Audiomotion.
 

Jon Creamer

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