{"id":3366,"date":"2017-03-01T12:03:53","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T19:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/epic-games-chevrolet-and-the-mill-blend-augmented-reality-and-film\/"},"modified":"2017-03-01T12:03:53","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T19:03:53","slug":"epic-games-chevrolet-and-the-mill-blend-augmented-reality-and-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taterboy.com\/blog\/2017\/03\/epic-games-chevrolet-and-the-mill-blend-augmented-reality-and-film\/","title":{"rendered":"Epic Games, Chevrolet, and The Mill blend augmented reality and film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thebuy<\/a> http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird-300×169.jpg 300w, http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird-768×432.jpg 768w, http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird-800×450.jpg 800w, http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird-780×439.jpg 780w, http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird-930×523.jpg 930w, http:\/\/1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/epic-blackbird.jpg 1200w” sizes=”(max-width: 578px) 100vw, 578px”><\/p>\n

\n

Epic Games, visual creation company The Mill, and car maker Chevrolet have created a film that uses the Unreal game engine to blend an animated car in real-time into a video that will be part of a television advertising campaign.<\/p>\n

The companies collaborated together on \u201cThe Human Race,\u201d a real-time short film and augmented reality presentation that uses Unreal Engine 4, virtual production technology, and Chevy\u2019s car brands. They showed off the film and how they made it at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.<\/p>\n

The film makes use of The Mill\u2019s special adjustable car, dubbed the Blackbird. The race car has QR codes and markers that allow it to be used as a template for digital animations. It also has a 360-degree camera. Filmmakers shot video of a real car and the Blackbird racing on a mountain road. Then, in real-time, the animators covered the car with digital animations that transformed it into another sleek race car. As they shot the Blackbird, the filmmakers could see through a viewfinder what the finished animated car would look like in the scene.<\/p>\n

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney (who will be a speaker at our GamesBeat Summit 2017<\/a> event in May) said in an interview with GamesBeat that the creators used an advanced implementation of\u00a0Epic\u2019s Unreal Engine with The Mill\u2019s\u00a0proprietary virtual production toolkit, Mill Cyclops, to create a film that merges real-time\u00a0visual effects and live-action storytelling.<\/p>\n

\"These<\/p>\n

Above: These cars have been reskinned in real-time.<\/p>\n

Image Credit: Epic Games<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cThis is a way to bring down the costs of animation,\u201d Sweeney said. \u201cBrands can\u2019t always have a car on the set. Sometimes that\u2019s due to security reasons. We had to find a way to visualize a car that wasn\u2019t there. So we created a virtual car using the Blackbird. We used the Blackbird in shoots and then skinned it with a computer-generated car.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the ad campaign, \u201cThe Human Race\u201d is about a real-life car driver\u2019s battle with an artificial intelligence being that drives a car without human control. The film\u00a0features the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 in a heated race with the Chevrolet FNR\u00a0autonomous concept car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis sounded crazy, but we figured out how to do this in real-time,\u201d said Kim Libreri, CTO, Epic Games, in an interview. \u201cIt\u2019s real-time visual effects. We generate cars, composite them, and put them in a video. This looks like it went through months of post-production processing. In reality, it is rendered in real-time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sweeney said, \u201cThe question here is can your game engine produce pixels that match the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Tim<\/p>\n

Above: Tim Sweeney (left) and Kim Libreri of Epic Games.<\/p>\n

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The only physical vehicle filmed for \u201cThe Human Race\u201d was the Mill Blackbird, a\u00a0fully adjustable rig that enables filmmakers to insert any car model into any filmed\u00a0environment. Until now, computer-animated cars were added by visual effects artists in post-production,\u00a0requiring days of rendering to produce high-quality imagery. During this shoot, however,\u00a0live video feeds as well as positional data from the Arraiy tracking system were fed\u00a0directly into Unreal Engine. The Camaro was then rendered and composited seamlessly\u00a0into the footage in real-time AR, allowing the directors to instantly see the final look and\u00a0composition of each shot.<\/p>\n

The same real-time technology was used to create, alter and produce the short film,\u00a0blurring the lines between production and post. The ability to create \u2018final pixels\u2019 in real\u00a0time will ultimately change the way filmmakers create content and make critical\u00a0decisions, Sweeney said.<\/p>\n

Alistair Thompson, executive vice president at The Mill, said at Epic\u2019s event that his company created Blackbird because it couldn\u2019t get access to a car that it needed to shoot a commercial. Chevy\u2019s commercial creators, however, need to be able to see the animated car as they shoot a scene through a viewfinder. On stage, Epic, Chevy, and The Mill showed how they could present an animated car on screen simultaneously as the Blackbird was being filmed in front of the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u2018\u201cThe Human Race\u2019 blends cinematic\u00a0storytelling\u00a0and real-time visual effects to define a\u00a0new era of narrative possibilities,\u201d said Angus Kneale, chief creative officer at The Mill\u00a0in New York, in a statement.\u00a0\u201cThis is a pivotal moment for film visual effects and the coming era of augmented\u00a0reality production. Using\u00a0Unreal\u2019s cutting-edge game engine\u00a0technology, filmmakers are\u00a0able to see their photoreal digital\u00a0assets on location in real time. It also means the\u00a0audience can effect change in films in ways previously unimagined, giving interactive\u00a0control over vehicles, characters and\u00a0environments within a live action cinema\u00a0experience. With Mill Cyclops, The Mill\u2019s\u00a0proprietary virtual production toolkit, we are\u00a0able to render and integrate digital assets into the\u00a0real world to a level never seen\u00a0before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Above: The red car is driven by a human, and the other is driven by an AI in The Human Race.<\/p>\n

Image Credit: Epic Games<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\u201dFind New Roads is more than just a tagline at Chevrolet. We embrace that mission in\u00a0the advanced engineering of our cars, and also in the way we service and communicate\u00a0with our customers,\u201d said Sam Russell, general director of global Chevrolet marketing, in a statement. \u201c\u2018The Human Race\u2019 brings a lot of those ideals together. The technology involved in\u00a0producing this film provides a glimpse into the future of customer engagement and could\u00a0play a unique role in how we showcase car model options with interactive technologies\u00a0like AR and VR.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Mill and Chevrolet conceived the film to kick off a multi-platform campaign\u00a0marking the 50th anniversary of the Camaro.<\/p>\n

Sweeney said, \u201cThis technology is changing the economics of entire industries.\u201d<\/p>\n

In another show of the Unreal Engine\u2019s quality, Sweeney invited Lucasfilm\u2019s chief creative officer at Industrial Light & Magic John Knoll on stage to talk about Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and how the Unreal Engine 4 was used to produce the final pixels for scenes that used the K-2SO\u00a0android.<\/p>\n

Knoll said that Unreal renders were worked into scenes with the robot, and you can\u2019t tell that the filmed scene blends both animated and real filmed sequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can imagine all these forms of digital content coming together in the Metaverse,\u201d Sweeney said, in a reference to the virtual world envisioned in sci-fi author Neal Stephenson.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are examples of real-time motion capture that bring to life things that weren\u2019t possible before,\u201d Sweeney said.<\/p>\n

Epic also showed another cool visual in a scene from Finding Dory. Pixar has created tools, such as a universal scene descriptor, that allows digital assets to be moved from games to movies and vice versa. The Unreal artists used that tool to take a scene from Finding Dory and turn it into an animated 3D scene that you could view from any angle. Now it\u2019s a place you can visit in VR.<\/p>\n

Sweeney also showed how you could use virtual reality to design a game, from inside the game. The Unreal Engine VR editor is a full editing tool that lets you build an entire level of a game from inside virtual reality. It\u2019s a bit like building a full game scene by snapping together Lego bricks and then twisting them into the right shape with your hands, the way a real artist does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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