SoKrispyMedia has announced that the first part of its ‘Daydreams’ series, a series of 360 degree short films which have been created as a partnership between SoKrispyMedia, MWM and Google. The first title in the series to be released is called Video Game Vehicle.
In the video Eric and Sam turn their carinto the ‘ultimate’ virtual reality (VR) machine and speed through a series of digital worlds. At first it’s all fun and games, but when they encounter a glitch, mayhem unfolds and they risk getting stuck in the simulation forever. The film co mbines live-action footage of actors in a car seat, which was shot against a green screen, the rest of the footage is CGI, which has been rendered using Unreal Engine 4.
It is becoming increasingly common for real-time rendering tools such as Unreal Engine 4 to be used when creating digital effects, as it provides a different set of tools for animators to work with when creating visual effects for films. Unreal Engine 4 also has a specific toolset for virtual reality (VR), which offers an advantage when creating for VR or 360 degree video.
“Real Time rendering is revolutionizing visual effects, allowing us to work faster and smarter. Utilizing unreal engine in our pipeline has allowed us to pre-vis with ease and utilize virtual camera and programmed events in our projects with fantastic results.” said Sam Wickert, creative at SoKrispyMedia.
The video uses Unreal Engine 4 for most background an environment rendering, which provided real-time results while working, enabling the creative team to do much more with pre-visualisation to perfect the scenes. Wickert used depth maps which were provided by Google’s Jump software that let him rotoscope out a character in the video, meaning areas could be matted out without needing a green screen backdrop. While traditional rendering techniques were used for the vehicle, all environmental lighting geometry was obtained from Unreal Engine in order to get a consistent and realistic look for the vehicle.
SoKrispyMedia say that these shorts are being made with state-of-the-art technology in partnership with the Google Engineering team, which gives them access to tools and technology no other creator currently implements. You can view Video Game Vehicle from SoKripyMedia below. For further news on new VR and 360 degree content, keep checking back with VRFocus.