Category: Dimension Studio

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Hammerhead Talks Vikings and VR

Yesterday, VRFocus reported on British virtual reality (VR) studio Hammerhead VR announcing a new project created in collaboration with The Viking Planet and Ridley Scott Creative Group’s RSA Films called Virtual Viking – The Ambush. A historical experience designed to take viewers back in time to a famous era in Norwegian history, VRFocus caught up with Hammerhead’s Head of Content, Erin Bower to find out more.

Virtual Viking

The studio was tasked with making a historically accurate scene for a VR experience which would be centre stage at the new Viking Planet Centre Oslo in Norway – which opens today. Using HP Reverb headsets, 40 guests at a time will be able to sit in a Viking longboat style arrangement, put on the head-mounted displays (HMD) and find themselves whisked back in time to view a Viking raid.

What makes the experience rather unique is the attention to detail and the volumetric capture. Actors were dressed in historically accurate clothing and given similarly matching props. They then acted out their scenes in Dimension Studios’ 360-degree greenscreen rigs, made up of 106 cameras which generate 10GB of data per second. This means that while the environments are computer generated, all the actual characters themselves are real, giving that extra sense of being there and seeing the virtual world come alive.

Virtual Viking – The Ambush was specially created for the Viking Planet Centre Oslo to enhance guests understanding of this famous period in history. At just 11 minutes long the experience is just a brief glimpse at the Viking way of life. Should the attraction prove to be popular Hammerhead VR did mention further additions could be on the cards.

Virtual Viking

Check out the full interview with Bower in the video below, as she goes into greater detail regarding Virtual Viking – The Ambush and how it was made. If you want to see it for yourself, then as mentioned, you’ll need to head to Norway. Or if you happen to be in Oslo then don’t forget to stop by and take a look at the new 1,600 square metre Viking Planet Centre. For lots more interesting VR use cases around the world, keep reading VRFocus.

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Become a Virtual Viking in The Viking Planet’s new VR Experience

Virtual reality (VR) has a unique way of bringing history alive, with museums and other institutions using the technology to help visitors visualise past events. And this is exactly what The Viking Planet has done for a new centre opening up this week in Oslo, Norway.

Virtual Viking

Central to The Viking Planet Centre Oslo will be a VR experience called Virtual Viking – The Ambush, sending guests back in time to board a Viking longboat as it goes on a raid. The project was created in collaboration between Ridley Scott Creative Group’s RSA Films, Hammerhead (ABE, Syren) and Dimension – Hammerhead’s London-based volumetric capture studio.

Using 106 cameras which generate 10GB of data per second, over 30 actors performances were captured in the studio for Virtual Viking – The Ambush, in a recording area only 8ft across. Meaning careful amalgamation was required to bring all the actors into each scene. And to give each actor and scene that look of authenticity Hammerhead used historically accurate weapons and props whilst employing Unreal Engine to bring the experience to life.

“We are extremely happy to have collaborated with RSA Films and Hammerhead on this ground-breaking production and look forward to offering the general public an opportunity to experience how it was to be on board a Viking ship more than 1,000 years ago in a very realistic and captivating way,” says Rasmus Ramstad CEO of The Viking Planet in a statement.

Virtual Viking

“RSA Films is continually looking for innovative ways to tell compelling stories. Through collaborations such as this unique volumetric capture experience we explore and embrace new technology to match our storytelling ambition,” adds Ridley Scott Creative Group CEO, Luke Scott. “The Virtual Viking – The Ambush project is a terrific example of the kind of immersive experience that challenges the future of storytelling. It is one thing to be a passive audience, it is quite another to be at the heart of the action.”

If you want to see Virtual Viking – The Ambush for yourself then you’ll need to head on over to Norway. The Viking Planet Centre Oslo is a 1,600 square metre interactive entertainment and education centre filled with holograms, interactive screens, and a 270° cinema to create a virtual portal to the era of the Vikings. And it opens tomorrow, 21st June 2019. For further updates from Hammerhead, keep reading VRFocus.

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Dimension Studio: The First Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Stage in the World

Having a state-of-the-art volumetric and 3D capture studio doesn’t come easy. However, when it came to the setting up Dimension Studio, it only took about a year. Dimension Studio opened on the 24th October 2017, in London thanks to the partnership of Hammerhead VR, Digital Catapult and Microsoft Mixed Reality Capture Studio. Harnessing six years of Microsoft research and one of the only three of such studios globally, Dimension Studio is the start for the next generation of immersive content in Europe. Callum Macmillan, Director at Dimension Studio gave VRFocus a tour of the first Microsoft Mixed Reality capture stage in the world. 

A dancer being captured inside the volumetric studio.

For those of you who do not know what volumetric capture is, it is essentially a moving image that you can look at from any angle. It’s free viewpoint content – a system for viewing natural video, allowing the user to interactively control the viewpoint and generate new views of a dynamic scene from any 3D position. When it comes to virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) or even regular videogames, the ability to portray a realistic human is usually done through animating virtual human beings. This breaks the ‘illusion’, as we can visually tell through subtle nuances, movements, eye contact and movement that what we are looking at is not ‘reality’. Dimension Studio aims to solve this problem by capturing real humans and creating a virtual asset of their performance that can then be used in VR,  AR or MR applications.

Macmillan has had 20 years of experience in camera technologies. Anything that would that involve filming a scene with multiple cameras, such as bullet time from The Matrix (1999). He explains that capture the virtual human can be done in their capture studio which has a total of 106 cameras. The stage is built up of eight towers on wheels, each tower has twelve cameras on them creating a circular array of 96 cameras. The twelve cameras consist of six RGB cameras and six infrared cameras, combined with lasers and lights to capture 2K resolution details of a human being.

The towers are on wheels to either film one to three individuals on the stage that measures up to eight feet across. When capturing a single individual and there is little movement, they will bring the towers closer to the subject in order to get the highest quality of capture. They have to be careful not to bring too many individuals in, particularly when characters interact, as object occlusion can take place. Occlusion takes place when one object in a 3D space is blocking another object from view from the cameras, distorting the image or footage capture. The additional ten cameras suspended from the top of stage complete the whole set up. The team have also put eight microphones on the top to get a good level, though the production team may choose to use clip mics or lav mics depending on the costume or clothing the subject needs to wear during the shoot. Macmillan explains that they’re not trying to do anything fancy with microphones like spatial audio, as this can be done in post-production. When VRFocus came by they had just added a bar on top in order to suspend people from the bar with wires for VFX or wire work, enabling action shots like flying for example. A similar setup also exists in the studio but with a primary focus on non-moving objects

At the moment anybody can hire the studio space. Production and animation houses can book the studio on a commercial basis, and researchers working in the immersive field that are seeking to push the boundaries are also welcome to come by.The footage captured can be used for various industries such as gaming, TV, film, fashion, digital manufacturing, health and education just to name a few. Macmillan says that clients from an entertainment  background, education, training and marketing are huge sectors that are excited about using their space. Dimension Studio is currently working with Sky VR and other broadcast partners to produce unique experiences across drama, sport and documentaries.

To find out more watch the video below.