CMU School of Drama


Thursday, April 02, 2020

How Previs Has Gone Real-Time

VFX Voice MagazineVFX Voice Magazine: Previs studios have always had to work fast. They are regularly called upon to fashion animatics quickly and make numerous iterations to suit changing scripts and last-minute inclusions. Often this also involves delivery of technical schematics – techvis – for how a shot could be filmed. And then they tend to regularly get involved after the shoot to do postvis, where again it’s necessary to deliver quickly.

5 comments:

Emily Brunner (Bru) said...

Pre-visualization software has skyrocketed in use these past couple of years, mainly due to the amount of television and film companies that are incorporating new technologies into their stories. An amazing example of this is in The Mandalorian tv show produced by Disney+. They use previz and virtual production to create real time content that is projected onto a massive LED wall on set. This allows the team to shoot scenes in distant galaxies and planets without ever leaving the studio. It's an amazing use of previz software. Maya is the leading standard for most companies, though according to the article there are many other kinds that are now becoming popular in the entertainment industry. Learning how to use Maya is on my to do list once school ends. It's such an amazing software that can be used to previsualize something for fabrication or for virtual design. It has a lot of uses and I'm excited to learn how to use it. I am also interested to see how previsualization software’s will go in the entertainment industry in the coming years. It is definitely a technology that will revolutionize the industry, if it hasn't already.

Cecilia S said...

The pace at which our modeling technology is growing surprises me all the time. I always forget how much advanced we are at modeling and rendering things that aren’t real in the moment. As a result, the market for this type of tech is expanding so much.

I’m amazed at how previs can be done in real-time now. Previs is not PREvis anymore. Although I don’t watch The Mandalorian, I didn’t know they used filmed the show with the actors in front of LED walls that were projecting content made with previs and virtual production. That not only speeds up post-production but I think actors would also benefit from this because they can actually see the environment around them, instead of just acting in front of a big green screen. Renderings and CGI will become so much easier and less time consuming if the real image is already incorporated with virtual elements when it is filmed.

Margaret Shumate said...

Wow. Frequently, I'll read an article on here and write some comment about how I think the AR or VR that they're talking about could be implemented into different workflows. This is the first article I've seen that gets there by itself. "This is the new tool, and here is how it is actively being implemented with mixed reality." This is really freaking cool. The jump to real time rendering means that the VR and AR tools that have been generating so much buzz in the last few years can really be exploited in a practical world. A director can now actually use a virtual set because if they want something changed they can say "change that" or "let's try this" and see it in real time, instead of having to wait hours for everything to re-render. That changes everything. That makes it feasible to use virtual settings, which opens up crazy effects and opportunities for big studios, and a cheap, fast way to produce content for smaller ones.

Unknown said...

During this time of staying inside, I am without access to equipment that we could use to make projects in real life. However, we do have our computers and learning how to create and shape environments digitally using tools we have already is a good skill to have, especially when there will be work to do that you are not able to be at all the time. Learning about advancing technologies like this is really interesting because none of us know exactly where our paths will take us, and we might have to work with some of the things discussed in this article, like game engines and animation. I wonder how accessible some of these creative tools would be available and practical for consumers to use. I also wonder what kind of hardware these companies are using, my not half bad consumer grade MacBook Pro takes hours to render seconds of footage.

Jillian Warner said...

Previs is so interesting. I’m still not sure I completely understand how it works. I had never heard of it until this year when it was brought up as a possible solution for Imaginarium. Although we didn’t have enough time for all of us to learn a program so that would not work. It is so interesting because it is sort of a combination of story boarding and animation. It is amazing how fast they can come up with the 3D renderings for a movie. I wonder how long Previs has been around, but one things for sure it is becoming a standard replacement for storyboarding in the film industry. They even used it for the Oscar nominated movie Ford v Ferrari. I would like to learn how to use a previs program at some point. It seems like it would be a really cool tool to know how to use.