Today Facebook announced two new 360-degree cameras, x24 and x6, updating last year’s open source Surround 360. Now Framestore – a creative studio behind Game of Thrones’ Ascend The Wall and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them VR for Daydream View – has revealed its an official creative and technology developer for the new devices.
Framestore worked with Facebook early on in development which was was key for the studio’s team, led by Executive Creative Director Aron Hjartarson, Senior Creative Developer and Sci-Tech Oscar winner Johannes Saam, and Creative Producer Guillaume Raffi.
“The potential of Facebook’s Surround 360 camera is incredible,” says Johannes Saam. ‘Its point cloud based approach, paired with image overlap, blurs the lines between 2D and 3D in the production pipeline and opens up the opportunities for advanced volumetric capture.”
Both the x24, and and the smaller, x6, are 6DoF (six degrees of freedom) cameras. x24 captures full RGB and depth at every pixel in each of the 24 cameras. By oversampling 4x at every point in full 360-degrees, x24’s depth-estimation algorithms produce full-resolution 6DoF point clouds.
“The volumetric capture of Surround 360 and its ability to generate dense point clouds to synthesize spherical stereoscopic images has the potential to be the next wave in cinematography,’ continues Saam. ‘Being a part of creating this process, and molding it into a modern production pipeline, was very exciting. Facebook has an enormous platform to evolve the ecosystem of 3D and 360 content. Framestore is proud to help them develop a product that will provide progressive creative and technology opportunities for the masses.”
No prices or availability have been announced, just that the cameras are expected to launch later this year, either to buy or rent.
VRFocus will continue its coverage of F8 and the Facebook Surround 360 x24 and x6, reporting back with any further updates.