Virtual production LED wall, which is a new film-making technology emerged recently, is attracting more attentions. It is an innovative and revolutionary concept that combines XR, the most advanced film production techniques, LED display wall, and so on. LED walls for virtual production are on their way to changing Hollywood and whole filmdom.
Today, we will take you to have insight of the virtual production LED wall from both technological level and business levels. We will tell you the principles and structure of it, and what are the points you should pay attention to so as to increase your potential profits.
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What Is XR LED Screen?
Before explaining this concept, let us discuss how many kinds of reality we can feel. Basically, there three types of reality on different levels, they are based on the real world, the virtual world and the psychological level separately,
And according to this concept, we classify different virtual technologies as VR, AR, MR, and XR. To understand XR, we should figure out the meanings and differences between the previous three.
First, VR. It may be a term we are already familiar with. It represents a kind of technology that will separate people and the real world, meaning people will immerse in the virtual world, and be isolated from the real world.
Second, AR. It is something based on reality. Do not like VR, which will isolate people from reality, it will overlap the virtual elements with the real world, but people can only feel the effect on the screen.
Third, MR. MR will mix reality with the virtual world. People can interact with the virtual elements in the real world.
Finally, XR. Generally, XR equals the mixture of VR, AR, and MR. It will use the three technologies in the same space. For example, the background behind the participant is achieved by MR, while the floating digital board in the presence of is fulfilled by AR.
This technology will give people more immersive experiences and the most reality compared with the other three virtual technologies.
The virtual production LED wall is a new type of filmmaking technology that involves XR to improve almost every aspect of filmmaking.
Today, we will bring you to understand such cut-edge technology throughly in straightforward language. Now, let’s follow us!
What Is Virtual Production LED Wall?
Imagine you are in film right now, you can interact with the creatures and nature there, capture the weather, take photos of these curious creatures who are coming to you, and see the changes of light and shadow during the sunrise and sunset of the entire day.
That seems cool, like something you can not meet in the reality, right? But with the virtual production LED wall, that becomes something you can do in real-time! And it is a technology that is on its way to going mainstream.
So, how is that achieved?
Before we talk about this cutting-edge tech that has been applied in film production, let us figure out what are the reasons for it coming from.
Why LED Wall Virtual Production Comes?
For example, the perspective effect, which is one of the most important parts of adding the sense of reality to the films can not be met by green screens and projection due to their limitations of fixed background and will cost significant labor and expenditure to make the film cater to the demand.
And there may be some unwanted and unexpected situations happening due to the disunion between shooting and post-production.
For instance, the lighting of the shooting site may not meet the requirements of post-production. One of the common situations happens when the lighting engineers mistake the lighting, for example, there is no correct reflect the light of props such as swords and helmets, thus resulting in huge tasks for the post-production staff and a sense of unreality.
Under such circumstances, people research and develop a combination of technologies lets filmmakers can replace the traditional green screens with LED walls to facilitate the shooting, reduce the unnecessary post production, add more realism such as the real-time perspective shift and appropriate reflect light, etc.
In a word, these functions can solve the pain points of traditional film shooting, and improve the whole visual effect while decrease the expanses on special effect producing and unnecessary redundancy. We will talk more about the special advantages of LED wall filming in other chapters below.
What Combines LED Virtual Production?
Although this question seems to involve some sophisticated terms, it is still simple to understand the structure at its most basic level. LED virtual production technology combines the technologies of a large wraparound LED wall, game engine (UE4 game engine), and camera with a tracking device on top. Next, we will explain these components separately.
First, the game engine, often the UE4 game engine, is a kind of software that can create special effects which will be displayed on the LED display screen.
Second, LED video wall. As you can see, it is the soul of this new technology. The virtual production LED display will take the burden of the background and display the special effects. The whole structures often like the picture shows:
Third, the camera with a tracking device. This kind of camera can capture the relative location of the screen, thus sending the tracking data to the game engine, and the real-time content out of the game engine will be displayed on the LED screen immediately.
In this situation, the physical actors in the real world can interact with the contents shown on the LED display wall, and the right perspective can be achieved immediately while do not need to adjust and create a complex effect during the post-production.
The background will look like a three-dimensional space that can be zoomed, tilted and traveled through but not the traditional simple flat backdrop.
Now, you may have already understood the basic three elements of unreal engine LED wall are LED display wall, game engine and camera with tracking device. Each of them consists the irreplaceable intelligent and high-tech new filming method.
The functions are many, for example, it can save lot’s money and energy in post-production, and can give the films something more realistic such as a better perspective effect that the other two are always lack of, and more details to add the reality.
For instance, the real-time reflecting effect, which is produced by the self-emitting specialty of LED wall.
It also combines the actual scene and LED background display to create real-time feedback to directors and actors to help them modify scripts effectively or devote themselves to the performance better.
If we list the advantages it has, you will find out how versatile it is, and how much it can facilitate the users.
What Are the Advantages?
The advantages are many, and each of them targets in dealing with the pain points of the traditional filmmaking industry. Here we list some typical of them but not limited:
(1) It tackles some harsh problems in the image matting, for example, the very arduous process of translucent glass.
(2) The LED displays are light-emitting displays. Therefore, it can give out light that emulates the real light source in the real world.
This specialty means the right reflect light can be created, which will increase realism in the movies a lot. However, the green screen can not play such a role as it can not emit light itself, resulting in more tough tasks for the postproduction phase.
(3) Directors and cinematographers will be able to see and modify background locations and visual effects when shooting the film, so there are fewer re-shoots and improvements needed in post phrase.
This can improve the efficiency a lot and shorten the time of film shooting.
(4) Actors will have more reference instead of taking the green screen as the substitute for the Computer Generated(CG) elements and pretending there is something.
This will improve their efficiency, and make their performances more accurate. enthusiastic and sincere.
(5) The set extensions can be created to combine with the LED backdrop seamlessly and match the scene in the post.
This will save the cost of props, and time consumed for the scene because some of them can be achieved by the LED background directly.
(6) If the director wants to change the light so that the shadow of the actor can show in the right manner, meaning only by moving the sun in the virtual LED wall can achieve this effect. Therefore, lots of complex lighting can be saved.
(7) Save time and money for the time-consuming scene changes, shortening the time required for the filmmaking to a great extent.
Now, the advantages of led wall film production are obvious – time and money-saving, more convenience, more realism, etc. This new technology targets the prevailing pain points of film making industry accurately, and can be a momentum for the whole industry revolutionary!
Why We Choose LED Display Screen?
We have went into details of the structure, principles, functions and advantages of virtual production combining with LED wall. But, have you ever considered a question – why do we choose LED display as the protagonist but not other displaying technology as LCD display?
In this chapter, we will figure out this question.
(1) As a self-emitting displaying technology, LED display screens can be the light source itself, while green screen or projection can only play as a background.
This speciality can create right reflection in the film, which will improve the visual effect and texture of the final product without lighting. For example, this characteristic will help a lot in where needs night scene.
(2) Large-scale seamless splicing. LED display board can achieve seamless splicing, and the size can be unlimited theoretically.
Virtual production LED walls need to be huge to create the surrounding background, and other displaying technologies such as LCD displays can not meet this requirement.
(3) High-standard visual effect. LED screens have high-quality displaying performance such as high color-saturation, high definition, enough brightness level, wide color depth and so on.
Besides, it supports glass-free 3D LED display, and it can be one of the core functions the virtual production will need.
To support basic requirements as the backdrop, the detailed and clear display performance are the inner requirement, and the advanced LED display technology that has already developed for decades can achieve this perfectly.
What Technical Points Should We Be Careful?
(1) Color correction
To achieve the real color fidelity, and avoid unnecessary rework, the color correction should be precise, and the color temperature should be at least 6300K to 6500K.
(2) High brightness, imitating the real illuminant
The high brightness can imitate the light source in real-world directly but does not need the post-production to take a long time to finish the job.
Moreover, it can save workload for lighting, for instance, the LED wall background can shine the studio, and the filmmaker can utilize the ambient light when they are shooting.
(3) High-quality display performance
We have talked about this point before, so we will not go into details here. It is obvious the high-quality visual performance is the footstone for the final excellent and vivid images.
Basically, it will require a small pixel pitch LED display with a pixel pitch under 4mm.
(4) Appropriate light
This question is commonly reflected in two fields:
- Some LED display boards will have a protection layer covering the module, which may cause the reflection.
This will cause some problems such as the actors can not step close to the screen as there will be a reflection point in the camera.
Thus, it is recommended to choose the indoor LED display which is anti-reflecting because many outdoor LED display will have such a protection layer on them to prevent outside damage.
- Limitation of brightness
Although LED wall can reach high brightness compared with other many types of screen, there is still some light source it can not imitate. For example, sunlight.
In this case, the lighting engineer will need to use props to create such light.
(5) Moire effect
The moire effect is related to the pixel pitch. This is a very tough problem for LED virtual production. We have some solutions to deal with such as taking the green screen as the background temporarily.
The most reliable method is finding a professional cameraman to solve this problem based on the specific conditions on site such as finding the right distance between the shot and the screen.
(6) Flickering
The most targeted solution is to find the high-quality LED display so there is less flickering. What is more, the cameraman can set the shutter speed at 1/60 per second as normal LED screen often runs at 60Hz.
(7) Scene matching with background
The task of arranging the scene should match the LED wall background. For example, the color of the same element should be the same, and the junction of the site and screen should be a seamless connection.
What Are the Using Scenarios?
Now, we have taken a long to talk about this technology, but do you know except the film production, what are the other using scenarios that virtual production LED wall can play an important role for you?
(1) Modern studio
The high-definition LED display can be an important carrier for the studio, equipped with the virtual studio system, the integration can achieve the 360° panoramic HD digital studio, creating an immersive visualization experience that makes the host or live guests feel like they are on the scene.
(2) Interactive classroom
The virtual production LED sets will make the classroom more interesting. The small pitch LED display can create a VR interactive classroom, which can make the teachers, students, and environment interact with each other fully, thus improving the teaching effect to break the barriers between the teachers and students and inject new vitality into the education industry.
(3) Stage and exhibition
Currently, there are three major experience types with the highest market awareness in China: immersive live entertainment, immersive art exhibition, and immersive performance. Combined with the post-production visual effects, the special effects only in films previously can come to life on stage. By using the giant high-definition LED screen, designers bring a new feeling to achieve comparable visual performances.
(4) Interactive digital media
With the rapid development of LED display technology, there are various LED products emerging in the LED industry. For instance, transparent LED display, LED floor screen, triangle LED display, ceiling LED display, and so on. These all can meet customers’ personalized and customized creative needs, and create a more valuable interactive cultural digital media space has become a new trend.
(5) Real estate field
The sense of “immersion” allows users to participate in the house by roaming around different housing types based on the virtual production LED sets. It can show the appearance of the property, the structure, layout, and lighting of the house all on the LED screen, which provides convenience to buyers, and save time and cost-costing for transactions.
This panoramic LED display on-site will be more skillful and pre-emptive to bring freshness to customers and enhance their desire to buy.
Conclusions
In this article, we discussed the hot topic – virtual production LED walls. We talked about it from many aspects including the meaning of XR, the sets of virtual production involving LED video wall, and the technologies that will be applied to the process. It is a new trend for the whole industry of the hugely improved efficiency and advanced final effect, therefore, it is an issue that everyone who has some sort of relation to LED industry has to know about. We offer high-quality virtual production LED display wall at the best price, just fill in the format to contact us if you have any need!