Green is the color of visual effects for a long time now
green-screen has been and is the main tool for creating some spectacular shots and
placing actors in some fantastic scenes
But recently with technology advancements something new started to be used
replacing green and blue screens
virtual sets
And I like to tell you a bit more about this technology and how it was used in the production of the Mandalorian
Well-prepared green or blue screenshots are today an easy way of
replacing backgrounds and creating set extensions
It's a proven technique that can deliver amazing results
But it also has some weak points
First of all, you have to very carefully prepare lighting on set
Especially if you're shooting in studio to match the light of your final scene in order to achieve believable resolves
That can sometimes require
changing the light setup from shot to shot or have the light sources visible and
interfering with foreground elements
Green-screen also casts a lot of green spilled on the actors
Then it all requires, of course good compositing to seamlessly blend the footage with a new background
Recently however, a new solution gains popularity
Which requires almost a no post-production the whole process is finalized onset
I'm talking about virtual sets which have been extensively used for the Star Wars Mandalorian series
In this case since there's real things on the set
We have real cameras and real people the sets are bigger than they were on Jungle Book
but it's essentially the same formula and now instead of having a green-screen they have to move around in light which took forever and that
Was really the frustration that led to these innovations which is how could we do that without green screens next time?
And so that led to do you have a green a green stage you have?
Pre lit green
areas that you could expose and and then it turned into these video walls where you could have green just behind the actor and an
Interactive light which we used on Jungle Book also for shadows and things on the characters if we took all the technology that I've been
Messing around with from all those other projects and applying it to a very specific application that would work for this
This is an example of a virtual set shot
How does it work the whole set is surrounded with a huge LED screen?
Which is displaying a prefered earlier background
There's even a screen above the actors to simulate sky
But what's more interesting is that the camera movement is being tracked live and the background is
Changing real-time to simulate parallax effect, which would happen while moving a camera in real environment
That was possible thanks to using unreal game engine
unreal together with Lux Machina studio recently presented a case study of this technique a
Huge benefit of this method is that the screens provide lighting and
Often no additional light sources are needed
You get beautiful kind of natural light and reflections of the environment
For mandalorian the VFX team
Only had to even out very slight color differences between the real part of set and screen
when both were visible
First however, they had to solve a typical problem of filming screens: the moire effect
Which can be visible while shooting a sharp image
To get rid of it a combination of right led size
Adequate camera sensor and lenses had to be applied
The use of Unreal Engine allows to make quick changes while shooting you can easily alter
lighting
elements of the background or completely change the environment
Seeing the final result while filming helps making creative choices and creating an artistic vision
Virtual sets provide even more possibilities
You can switch small part of the screen to be a green screen
You still have the natural lighting and the environment reflections
But now you can add some additional CG elements between the actors and the background
The missing part of the background can be rendered as a separate pass to easily restore it in post-production
Or you can replace the green-screen with a background rendered in higher quality than the one used on set
One can see virtual sets as a modern version of rear projections a
practical effect
used in filmmaking almost since the beginning of cinema
However here with all the new technology behind it. The results are just stunning
Entering the next level of realism
The new technique
together with Jon Favreau's drive for innovation
once again put Star Wars franchise in the forefront of VFX development while still staying true to
its practical effects tradition
It's one of those things that keep VFX and filmmaking an exciting experience
Thank you for watching
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