Chevrolet announced today on stage at the Epic Games keynote speech at the GDC the existence of a real-time rendered advertisements created by visual effects (VFX) company The Mill, using Unreal Engine and The Mill’s dynamic Blackbird car in combination with new augmented reality (VR) platform Mill Cyclops.
Blackbird is a fully adjustable car rig that can be used in place of a real car in filming situations where it is not possible, for whatever reason, to use a real car.
Cyclops is a new virtual production toolkit that allows you to see CGI object live on location, tracking in real-time. In combination with the Blackbird, it is possible to use laser tracking and the four cameras on top of the Blackbird to produce an AR image of a Chevrolet Camero ZL1 that displays in real-time, including live reflections.
The Mill are well known for their award-winning visual effects, particularly for British sci-fi series Doctor Who. They have done previous work in the virtual reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) arena, as previously reported by VRFocus.
The demo was performed using a Google Tango-enabled tablet-phone.
Alistair Thompson, International Executive Vice President at The Mill had this to say; “Visual effects should never get in the way of stories it should help tell stories. The future of filmmaking is realtime.”
VRFocus will continue to bring you news from the Epic Games keynote and the rest of GDC.