CBC is taking its cyberset to primetime.

The national broadcaster has deployed its Orad Cyberset O system – used for the past year exclusively for its morning children’s programming lineup – as a cg environment for The Nature Of Things host David Suzuki.

The virtual stage will make its cbc primetime debut Nov. 29 in a two-part program titled Race For the Future, which looks at the evolution of medicine, the environment and technology. Three unique sets were modeled – one for each segment – through a combination Alias|Wavefront Maya software and a gaming program called GameGen 2.

The Orad system integrates Suzuki with the virtual set and renders the scene in realtime at 30 frames per second through an SGI Onyx 2.

Terry O’Neill, the in-house designer who created the sets, says the network wanted to create a special look for the show’s 40th anniversary, something beyond a traditional chromakey set.

‘You’d think you could just do these sorts of shots in a chroma set, so you really have to make it worthwhile,’ he says.

To do so, O’Neill rendered three unique, dynamic sets which stand to illustrate the focus of each segment well beyond the means of a simple digitally enhanced background.

The medicine segment, for example, features the human body, with Suzuki wandering among a spine and heart and other red-tinted components of the body.

The Orad technology allows Suzuki to step in front of or behind virtual objects while the camera dollies around, giving the impression of a limitless three-dimensional space, an effect impossible to create with a chroma set.

It usually takes six weeks to create one such set, O’Neill says. Working under deadline, it took him nine weeks to complete all three.

For the environment section, O’Neill created a virtual rain forest with massive leaves and green jungle floor. For the technology segment, digits and data flow along cold blue geometric scaffolds.

Daniel Zuckerbrot, the program’s producer, says he was most impressed with the Orad’s ability to create such vast spaces out of limited areas.

Suzuki appears to move in a space several stories high when in reality he was confined to work before a blue grid only about 12 feet tall and 30 feet wide along the back wall of cbc’s Studio 42. The dynamics of his movements are choreographed through a combination of relatively restricted camera dollies and the work of programmers shifting the set from an sgi workstation.

‘For the talent it’s very complicated because they’re working in a set that they don’t understand, that they can’t see,’ says Zuckerbrot.

Originally created by an Israeli company for the military to visualize flights, the Orad Cyberset employs infrared cameras which pick up an led tracking sensor on the back of Suzuki’s neck as he moves about the chromakey grid backdrop. The camera, which is hooked up to an Onyx workstation, reads Suzuki’s position relative to the grid and transmits the data. Suzuki is composited into the scene through an Ultimatte switcher live-to-tape.

Similar virtual sets have been used by Discovery and ontv, which began employing an Orad Cyberset live-to-air on its local newscasts in May.

Zuckerbrot says there are no plans to use the Cyberset beyond the Race For the Future segments.