Thursday, September 16, 2021
Here’s the tech behind the Carolina Panthers’ giant AR cat
The Verge: This past weekend marked the first Sunday of the 2021 NFL season, and while it was full of exciting highlights, one may have towered over them all: the Carolina Panthers’ viral video of a giant virtual panther leaping around Bank of America Stadium.
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The footage this article talks about promises a lot of change and development in the future of live entertainment. Whether it's sports, concerts, or even theatre, AR technology will surely figure largely in the shows of tomorrow. As tech continues to advance, new ways to incorporate it with real life are constantly being discovered. While this does appear to be a big-budget implementation, only accessible to football teams on season opening nights, I'm sure we can expect to see more of this in the future. At the moment, the short 30-second clip seemed to take a lot of preparation, from the animation of the cat to the creation of a virtual stadium for it to interact with, before practicing the actual camera movements to "follow" it as it leapt around. But it's possible that with further development animation programs will be able to create virtual collision maps based on live footage on the fly. I'm curious to see how it's implemented in the future.
If these News Quiz articles have taught me anything, it's that I desperately need to learn how to use a computer. Every week I read about some new incredible piece of technology and I am consistently flabbergasted by the use that have been put to and the possibilities they hold for theatrical applications. I can just imagine the genius of a high tech production featuring digital characters interacting with live co-stars, perhaps even as a commentary on digital separation. Anyway, I really need to learn to program at least a litt, maybe I can look into it as an elective. I foresee some sort of programming course becoming a core part of the School of Drama’s curriculum at some point, and I hope to see that day come. However I have no idea how it would fit into the already stacked schedule of the SOD students, though thats a problem for smarter people than me.
I agree with Jeremy that training on the software side is becoming just as important if not moreso important as the hardware side of things. Especially for those working in a management role. Anyone can be quickly brought up to speed on what connections go to what connections and how to set up a system. But I think the real future of having a stable and steady job in the entertainment industry is going to come from an individuals ability to design and troubleshoot all these systems at the level of the interface and deeper. Especially for individuals like TDs who might be the only person on staff at a facility that has familiarity with some of the more obscure software. I do feel that it's getting to the point that the typical undergrad theatre program is a crash course in all the various departments and what they do while grad school is the specialized training that brings you into the role that you want to perform in the entertainment industry.
Augmented Reality is such an interesting concept. This “performance” of the panther running and bouncing around the stadium is incredibly impressive. Not so much because of the quality of the CGI panther, but because of the technology and process behind it. My brother in law is a cinematographer, and when Covid hit, he dived into the world of virtual production, which is kind of the opposite of putting a fake panther in a real setting, but instead putting a real person into a computer generated setting in live time. It is similar to how shows like the Mandalorian film on a volume – a giant screen that projects the backdrop of the scene being filmed and adjusts real time to where the camera is positioned. Over the summer, I got a chance to shadow him on a shoot for a Google ad, and it was incredible seeing how the process of real time keying worked. He had built an apartment within unreal engine, and for shooting, there was only the actress, a couch, a table, and a massive green screen. Using unreal engine and various infrared sensors, plus a really beefy computer, the apartment was rendered into the background in real time. The technology has come really far really fast, and before long, I am sure that the CGI panther will look as real as the real thing.
I'm so excited to be seeing things like this popping up more and more in this blog. AR, VR, mixed reality, etc are really interesting technologies that have so many potential entertainment uses and I think we're a few years away from an explosion in use. Seeing these big splashy implementations at sporting events is encouraging because it represents the price (both monetary and difficulty) falling enough for interesting uses to be realistic to use in actual real world events. The prices should continue falling, and hopefully in another few years AR and VR will be more than just gimmicky tricks for your phone to show you a cat on your living room table; we'll actually start to see these technologies implemented into daily life, both as entertainment effects (and imagine all the cool effects) and as interfaces and tools (can't wait for 3D CAD to be 500% less annoying when it's in 3D).
Football, Football, Football. :) thank you for these articles! I saw this the other day and I was wondering about how they did this. I love how there are opportunities for really amazing technology in the sports entertainment industry. I only started looking into this stuff last year during the pandemic but the tech that they use (in the NFL at least) is really spectacular! Did you know that CMU’s very own David Tepper owns the Carolina Panthers… So pretty much he is finding projects like this. I didn’t realize how VAST CMU’s alumni network is… I think it would be so cool to work on something like this one day!! I must say I have nooooooooo clue about this kind of software and I have only started to dip my toe into the sports live entertainment industry but projects like this make me look forward to job opportunities in the future!
I love to see the application of AR and mixed reality in sports. It is clear that these technologies are becoming such a phenomenon that various industries are getting on it. I think that this means we can anticipate the more widespread use of AR in theatrical performances. Which is so thrilling to me. It would completely change some capabilities of the industry. We have already seen it in concerts and events like Eurovision. However, I do not believe mixed reality has been used in a Broadway or other large scale theatrical production. It honestly reminds me of Robert Edmond Jones’ writing in “The Dramatic Imagination”. There he discusses the application of media and art and how technology will always be advancing. I think it is so thrilling to be a part of this technological evolution at the forefront of our industry, and I look forward to seeing how AR interacts within the theatrical industry in the near future.
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