M+E Daily

Game Engines Still a Hurdle for Film Studios Learning Virtual Production

Virtual production has become increasingly used by film and TV show makers in recent years thanks to the successes of movies including Avatar and The Jungle Book and, more recently, TV shows including “The Mandalorian.”

But very few production companies outside the video game industry are up to speed on virtual production techniques, according to software development studio ICVR.

“Only a few studios and companies… know how to utilize existing technologies and build new tools and pipelines to basically expand and scale their virtual production technologies,” Sinan Al-Rubaye, chief experience officer at ICVR, said Oct. 21 while moderating the Virtual Production breakout panel session Virtual Production: Under The Hoodduring the Introducing the MESAverse event.

That is largely because of the integration of game engines required for virtual productions, he said, noting game engines had been an “alien thing” to movie and TV production companies before the past 4-6 years or so.

Now more than ever, studios have realized they must learn how to integrate engines like Unreal and Unity into their existing pipelines. Over the past year and a half, there has been an expansion in the use of game engines for virtual movie production beyond just previsualization, scouting and motion capture into a larger, more central role as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The panel session gathered technologists, virtual production experts and thought leaders who have been at the forefront of innovation in the media and entertainment industry. They discussed virtual production pipelines, tool creation, real-time remote access and collaboration, the cloud and more.

Mariana Acuña Acosta, chief product officer and co-founder at Los Angeles-based Glassbox Technologies, told viewers she set out five years ago to start building virtual production tools that were cross-platform and easy to use.

As just one example of the complexity involved in virtual productions, she pointed out: “You can end up with 100 different versions of a shot” so you need to keep track of changes real-time while collaborating live.

Virtual production is allowing organizations to “access content faster,” according to Ryan L’Italien, director of solutions at Minneapolis-based Perforce Software, explaining: “They can take a Glassbox device, go on set [and] see what’s happening in real-time.” Dailies used to have to be converted and that takes time. “Now they can hop in, use the technologies and just get real-time feedback.”

Perforce’s offerings include Helix Core version control software, which tracks and manages changes to source code, digital assets and large binary files.

That provides one centralized place for all digital assets that an organization has, L’Italien said, noting digital assets have become increasingly important. It worked really well in gaming to have all assets in one central place, he noted, adding his company moved into the film industry this past year.

Game engines allow film and TV production companies to have previsualization and they can then iterate with the assets and share them with 50 teams, L’Italien noted. This is “changing the way we make movies,” he said.

A Culture Shift

For film and TV production companies, however, “it’s a culture shift,” L’Italien noted, explaining: “When you make a game, it takes three to four years and you have the ability to, at the beginning of a game, figure out those pipelines, figure out those processes [and] try new technologies.”

On the other hand, in film and TV production, there are much “shorter time lines,” he said, adding: “You have three months, six months, maybe a year, and you have to learn a new technology and you don’t have time for that.”

Film and TV production companies are likely using the same version of Autodesk Maya software they used three years ago that they “know in and out, and that’s going to be your workflow,” L’Italien said. But “when they move to remote you have to learn these new technologies and it forced a culture shift to think like game developers,” he added.

Agreeing, Acosta said: “One of the big challenges has been… those pipelines have been put in place since a long time ago” in the film and TV world. There has been a big investment in render farms and servers, and “it’s very established, so that’s like a monster in itself because” the pipelines are “very rigid” and studios all over the world have been “pumping out the content. It’s worked for X amount of years.”

So, even if they are “firm believers” and love the virtual production technology, they’re not sure how to implement it into their pipelines and “pivot from these huge established traditional pipelines,” she added.

Another challenge is that game industry and virtual production technology is evolving quickly, according to Al-Rubaye. Meanwhile, it takes a film studio maybe six months to a year to make a shift and, in that time, game engines have evolved and there are new tools out there, so what the studio has been deciding on for the past six months “might not be what you need anymore,” he explained.

Ihar Heneralau, CEO of ICVR, noted that he had a game development background before co-founding ICVR in 2016.

Prior to that, in 2012-2013, he saw pipeline issues in the game development sector, he said, noting that at one studio there would be 3-4 engines being used just to create games.

The game industry “went through this pipeline consolidation and I think virtual production will do the same,” he predicted.