The virtual art department is the advocate for the art department on the virtual stage.

And its emergence encouraged a stronger artistic consciousness in the virtual production pipeline by helping to integrate the art direction, cinematography and realtime visual feedback of the sets, virtual environments and characters during the virtual camera "shoot." You can track the motion of the actors and the director's camera, but if you can't see an appealing environment and atmosphere through the camera in realtime then the organic "in the moment" discovery process is crippled. Early tests of most virtual camera systems included crude representations of the environments and characters at best and lighting and shadow were almost entirely missing due to optimization issues, unfamiliarity with the software and system calculation overhead. Being familiar with the current motion capture tools, 3D software and hardware and the limitations of those applications, it became clear to me what could be achieved by combining the strengths of game engine optimizations while packing in as much of the production design and lighting information for realtime feedback for the director.

Additionally, once those basics were covered, why stop there? One of the major strengths of virtual filmmaking is the additional realtime flexibility that it allows for the director and creative team above and beyond that of previous filmmaking workflows. Some of the techniques that I and other team members stumbled upon while working under fire led to the development of creative organizational systems for the digital assets, which allowed easy re-use, interactive manipulation and unparalleled creativity in realtime for the filmmakers. The goal was to make the virtual props and environments serve the needs of the directors and their virtual camera while offering as many options as possible as quickly as possible. The techniques that emerged could easily fill an article by themselves and often required thinking way outside of the box.

The combination of these various technologies equals so much more than the sum of the individual parts. Used together, the actor's facial and body motion capture, the director's virtual camera data and the realtime artistically appealing feedback of interchangeable 3D virtual sets and characters created by the virtual art department all combine to give a realtime, visceral experience back to the director, actors and the rest of the creative production team. More creative decisions can be made "in the moment" and on the "virtual set" with the "virtual actors" in much the same way that directors are accustomed to on a live-action film shoot. By solving many of the creative and logistical problems early and directly with the director and actors during the virtual production, process time and money can be optimized and the problems aren't unnecessarily sent down the production pipeline to create wasted effort on shots that don't work and require endless feedback and more expensive post-production time to fix. On top of replicating a live-action production workflow, the virtual workflow allows additional options for the director that would likely be impossible on a live-action set. The realtime immediate feedback of all of these elements is the overriding theme that once again heralds the dawn of a new cinematic era, unshackles the filmmakers and offers a re-emergence of the organic, living, breathing, filmmaking process now reborn as "virtual filmmaking."

A graduate of the USC Cinema Production program and AFI Fellow, Robert Powers has most recently worked on stereoscopic projects as animation TD and/or virtual art department supervisor for directors James Cameron (Aliens of the Deep and Avatar) and Steven Spielberg (Tintin).These have been for Earthship Prods., Lightstorm Ent., Pandora Film Services Inc. and DreamWorks Prods. LTD.Powers specializes in early design/animation conceptualization and virtual filmmaking workflow setup. You can contact him at rob@robpowers.com.