Montreal: Remember the weather guy who flipped the chalk, or his near descendant with the magnetic sunshine indicators?

The technology that displaced those old ways of imaging the weather report – locked-camera 2D chromakey – is itself being displaced after a 20-year reign by a new generation of interactive 3D set technology called virtual sets.

Ever enhanced graphics and an ability to realistically integrate virtual and real elements promise to make virtual set technology fly. It’s likely to begin wending its virtual way to mainstream manifestation in the months ahead.

The new technology’s ability to deliver seamless interaction between the live and the virtual appears to be the major area of progress, and the associated cost of never again building a set is a key selling point. An elite handful of suppliers including Discreet Logic, Accom and Electrogig are competing for the North American market.

In generic terms, virtual sets combine traditional blue-screen photography of onscreen personalities with 3D computer-generated graphics and animation. As the two elements are brought together, the technology allows the 3D set to change in real-time response to camera pans, zooms, tilts and camera-to-camera transitions.

Primary benefits

The result is a 3D broadcast environment in which on-air personalities can actually move around, or even partially disappear behind the virtual set.

As cyberworld images replace sets created with hammers, paint and saws, sellers will pitch tv broadcasters on three primary benefits of virtual sets – increased creative flexibility, the elimination of almost all set construction and maintenance, and the ability to reduce costs associated with studio space by using ever smaller studios.

Discreet Logic

Roddy McManus, a producer with Discreet Logic in Montreal, says virtual sets represent ‘the most exciting change in broadcasting since the introduction of chromakey.’

Discreet Logic is introducing a complete line of products for the creation of virtual sets.

Its overall virtual set integration environment is called Vapour, a software package offering efficient real-time rendering of 3D sets as well as the ability to combine live-action footage with computer graphics.

Vapour enables broadcasters to create and manipulate virtual sets in production and in real-time. Live-to-tape programming can be offlined for final edit, and sets can be saved or reused as program needs change.

Frost and Glass are components of Discreet Logic’s virtual set technology.

Frost is a complete 3D modeling and animation system. It supports the assignment of complex texture maps such as image stills or live video onto 3D objects, and can also handle input and on-air incorporation of real-time data from outside sources.

Glass provides highly precise camera control and matching for both the virtual and live-action elements by combining signals from sensors on the cameras with a 3D graphics workstation.

Glass operates in both online and offline modes, meeting post-production and real-time requirements.

Leigh Pesqueira, public relations director with Discreet Logic in Cambridge, Mass., says the company’s virtual set packages will be custom-oriented and prices will reflect individual broadcast and client needs. She says Discreet’s price packages ‘will be in the same range as the competition.’

Accom virtual sets

According to Patrick Renvoise, Accom’s director of virtual set systems, the company’s Elset (Electronic Set) system creates highly realistic sets thanks to features such as radiosity lighting, optimized animation, precise calibration of real and virtual elements, and a sophisticated feature called a ‘Z-key,’ a distance key which allows real objects and actors to partially disappear behind virtual objects.

Renvoise says the Elset system provides open solutions and can interface with 3D modeling programs from Alias, Wavefront, Softimage or AutoCad, scanners and paint packages, as well as various models of camera heads and pedestals including Radamec and Ultimatte.

Hardware configuration

The Elset system setup requires an sgi Onyx workstation, a pc used for camera control, a chromakey blue box, and a set of special sensors mounted on both the camera pedestal and lens.

The Elset system features an ‘infinite blue box,’ where the camera can turn 360 degrees (even outside the physical blue box) and still display the virtual world, creating the impression that a small studio is in fact much larger. Other features include automatically triggered sound events and cameras moving on all three axis.

Renvoise itemizes some of the many cost and creative advantages virtual sets offer broadcasters:

– Sets can be changed in seconds using components of existing models or sourced from libraries.

– The sets can be large or small with no regard to the physical limitations of a real studio. Warehouse costs disappear overnight and heavy sets never have to be moved. (None of the promo literature at this stage says anything about dumping the cost of lighting and stage technicians, but it is the kind of advantage that won’t be lost on broadcasters, and unions.)

– Studio investments can be maximized because the same studio can be used for news, commercial production, magazine shows, even drama.

– The complex and costly task of lighting a real set can be simulated by virtual set technology, reducing turnaround time.

– Virtual sets are mobile and can be transported on a diskette or in a briefcase, reloaded onto another virtual set system, or used to begin production in another studio.

– Virtual set f/x can be done in real-time on-air, creating economies at the critical point of production.

Silicon Studio

Integral to all the emerging virtual set systems is the powerful Silicon Graphics Onyx platform.

According to sgi, which is partnering with various suppliers through its entertainment marketing subsidiary, Silicon Studio, virtual sets look like this:

On-air announcers work in an all-blue chromakey environment. As sgi’s powerful computers generate 3D on-air sets in real-time, the sets are converted to video and fed into an Ultimatte keyer where the live-camera feed, including the talent, is keyed into the set. As the studio cameras’ position changes, signals from the camera head and lens update the 3D model in real-time.

The Accom system ranges in price from $500,000 to $1.2 million and includes all the software and computer hardware. The complete solution price, cameras and mounts included, is in the $1 million to $2 million range, says Renvoise.

Reality Tracking

Electrogig, a global 3D software company based in San Francisco, is behind a virtual set technology called Reality Tracking. Electrogig offers its solution in association with A.F. Associates, an American broadcast systems integrator.

According to Electrogig, ‘on-the-fly 3D rendering of virtual environments provides broadcasters with the ability to respond quickly and creatively to late-breaking news and other time-critical events, and realize huge savings in physical space, construction and storage costs.’

In June, Electrogig and afa generated the first virtual set used in a u.s. national broadcast for the abc special Common Sense with John Stossel.

Commenting on the broadcast, Preston Davis, president of abc broadcast operations and engineering, says, ‘Traditional sets will always exist, but virtual sets with their unlimited creative effects potential will revolutionize the film and broadcast industries.’

Reality Tracking is a fully integrated, rack-mounted turnkey virtual set technology using an sgi Onyx microprocessor and Lightscape Visualization System software, a lighting software package from Lightscape Technologies of San Jose, Calif.

In 1996, conventional and specialty broadcasters will introduce virtual set technology, but for the moment, Renvoise says the virtual set produced for abc’s special ‘was of very poor quality. We were surprised it was broadcast.’