Public Funding for Framestore Limited(The)

Virtual production (VP) is a term that describes any aspect of modern filmmaking that employs real-time technology to move some element of pre-production, shooting or post-production into a shared virtual space. Currently these techniques are primarily reserved for a small number of big-budget Hollywood movie productions with the ability to invest large amounts of time, resources and infrastructure into this technology. What we propose with this grant are three cutting edge pieces of research and development that combine to create an agile scalable VP solution that will allow these techniques to be utilised across projects of all scales, reduce the barrier to entry for new users and be more efficiently scaled to work within a wider production infrastructure: 1. Development of a simple set of tools that improves on the state-of-the-art in virtual production, by implementing an agile, cost effective, easily deployable VP setup, created from the ground up with remote collaboration and the needs of the geographically distributed filmmakers at its core, who, due to Covid-19, must be able to operate with minimal in person support. 2. An innovative, adaptable new toolset that enables the data and creative decisions made within a virtual production session to be captured, organised, packaged and published in order to be efficiently utilised by downstream departments and the wider infrastructure required of productions both large and small. 3. A pipeline for the structured sharing of assets between VFX software and the real-time game engines required for VP, thereby improving workflows, increasing efficiency and therefore reducing cost. By simplifying the hardware setup and user interface for VP, bringing automation and order to the data capture and improving the efficiency of transferring computer generated assets into the virtual space we will create a powerful new suite of cutting edge tools that will allow film and television production to once again be productive in the face of Covid-19 travel and shoot restrictions.

"A key factor holding back the projected growth of immersive content is the quality of character, creature and performance animation currently enabled by real-time engines. This challenge is immense, because as well as capturing the creative vision of Producers, engaging narrative content must contain rich and nuanced facial expressions, body dynamics, gestures and other complex interactions, for example between a character's skin and their clothing. Directed film-quality animation techniques from the feature film VFX industry can already produce outstanding and compelling character animation. Indeed, a wealth of digitally rich and complex character assets already exist within this domain, even extending to convincing digi-doubles. However, despite there being many parallels with these proven processes, two major technical challenges related to the production of real-time immersive content remain unmet. These arise primarily from the requirement for real-time rendering, as well as the fundamental quantity of animation required for unrestricted viewpoints in immersive. Existing engine-based content therefore nearly always fails to achieve the required level of engagement, in terms of scale or quantity, severely limiting growth of the immersive market. In response, Framestore, a world-leading VFX, CGI and VR/immersive studio, are collaborating with WeightShift, a disruptive software start-up, to overcome these barriers. Through new tools developed for film-quality character asset and performance animation in real-time environments, the project outputs target a step-change in the cost and timescales of film-quality immersive content-creation, and corresponding levels of audience engagement. This highly ambitious collaborative R&D project therefore yields broader impacts on overall UK capabilities across multiple sectors, and capacity to populate the immersive entertainment industry with film-quality animated content."

Productivity Optimised Pipeline for digital production (ProDip) is an 18 month collaborative project addressing key needs in the digital production industry (including CGI for films, games, augmented & virtual reality) of rapid motion capture (including detailed facial expression and body movements) with improved and more efficient production pipeline processing – reduction of cost and faster creation of content. ProDip will leverage an increased quality of output and reduce manual input, lowering costs of production and removing barriers to enter new markets for cross platform digital assets. This project therefore seeks to realise a novel suite of integrated modular software tools to automate key pipeline processes with increased efficiency, flexibility and analytic capability for face and body MoCAP, opening a new digital production route. Project lead, Framestore, are a well-respected traditional and digital film, TV post UK production company (inc. CGI for Gravity, Avengers). Vicon are an established motion capture equipment company providing integrated hardware & software solutions to AAA studios & SME developers.

CISE is a one-year project designed to create a cross-industry digital security environment with an extensible, pluggable framework, to protect the UK’s companies making movies, TV, commercials, games, on-line and immersive media. The goal is to create a ‘digital immune system’ for media companies, which will constantly watch for and warn against both internal and external security threats, tailor security systems automatically to meet client requirements and threat levels, and immediately shut down and repair systems should any breach occur. The outputs will be Open Source security toolkits and templates; a managed security service from Sohonet based on Open Standards; a draft security specification for the digital media industries; and best practice guidance. The consortium brings together the UK’s three largest media facilities / VFX houses, together with Sohonet – the pioneering professional community-of-interest network for the television, film and media production industry – and an SME facility house.