The Challenge:
Back in 1993., as Creative Director and Production Manager at PIXEL - at that time Israel's leading studio for Animation and Visual effects - I was tasked by CEO Rami Weitz - to commercialize the use of recently acquired MILO - Robotic Motion Control System. Essential problem of positioning Motion Control System in Israel - was potential market's lack of experiences in Visual Effects Productions: It was hard for customers to imagine both how & why - should they use the Motion Control System.
The Solution:
Inspired by works of one of my dearest visiting professors from Film Academy days - Mr Zoran Perisic - I proposed to CEO Rami Weitz - an advanced novel concept for visual effects - concept that will integrate real-world and 3D CG - in real time.
My goal was to enable clients to see combination of actors and 3DCG in real-time, with the clear target to overcome client's barriers to visualize/imagine - how combination of live action and 3D CG will look like. And - at the same time - enable some return on investments for Motion Control System.
Novel Concept:
By basically reversing the concept of motion control, I created the seed concept of Virtual Production technology.
Using reversed process - Motion Control system was feeding real-world camera positions and movements to SGI computers' ''Reality Engine'' - which rendered instant 3D CG background of set that was keyed-in behind the actors/presenters - in real-time, utilizing chroma key switcher.
Result: Virtual Production, or Extended Reality (XR) for TV:
Resultant real-time combination of Virtual Set and Real people - represents the first forms of what today we call Extended Reality. Reality of actors in an empty studio was ''extended'' - by combining real-world elements with computer graphics - where cinematic viewpoints of real-world cameras and virtual cameras were synchronized.
As Film Director and Animator, I always loved to come up with ideas that featured interaction between real and virtual, where actions of actors will feature reaction in virtual set and vice-versa.
Achieved:
This seed concept was later changed and enhanced with genious solutions of multi-disciplinary crew at Pixel Control.
At the same time - Pixel Group was making fast turn towards Multimedia production, and wanted to re-focus away from TV- based productions - into producing CD multimedia titles.
After making strategic decision to leave TV production behind, Pixel Group disconnected Pixel Control, and it's amazing team embarked on their own quest - to monetize the novel concept we dubbed at that time as ''Virtual Studio'' or ''Virtual Set''.
Capable team of programmers and technologists of Pixel Control continued to perfect the system, and re-named their operation to RT-SET. After merging with Peak Broadcast Systems - Rt-Set became VIZ-RT, and continued developing and monetizing the first Virtual Production technology in the world.
Today - VIZ-RT is a worldwide market leader in the areas of broadcast real-time 3D graphics for the media and entertainment industry.
Impact on the industry:
Virtual Sets were ''technological dears'' of many leading TV stations across the world. Several companies - during the years - emulated same concept, but utilizing different techniques.
Today, this seminal Virtual Production concept - due to affordable enabling technologies - finally matured into today's mainstream production tool for films and television: Virtual Production Volumes - used by leading production studios across the globe.
