M+E Connections

Virtual productions rely heavily on 3D assets and when a production company is shooting in volume, the assets that are rendered in real-time have to be just right.

The process of getting those assets pixel perfect begins early and involves many versions, artists and also multiple organizations.

Perforce Software’s suite of tools can be “used in virtual production to help save time and money and headaches,” Katie Cole, gaming evangelist and director of product marketing for Perforce Helix Core, said May 19 at the Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit (HITS), during the Production + Workflow breakout session “Better Data Management to Keep Virtual Productions on Time & on Budget.”

During the session, she and Jase Lindgren, VFX specialist and solutions engineer at Perforce Helix Core, explained how the Perforce Versioning & Collaboration Suite can not only help significantly in the early stages of a virtual production but also when shooting in volume, keeping the production on track and on budget. She also provided a brief history of version control and explained its importance to film and TV production.

Cole stressed that what she and Lindgren would be talking about during the session was based on “what we know today from talking to our customers and clients.”

Although Perforce has been around for about 30 years, the company is “new to media and entertainment” (M&E), she pointed out, noting that, aside from games, M&E is “not where we started out; it’s not what we were originally intended for.” The firm entered the game development arena 15 years ago and now it’s expanding into film and TV production thanks to the rise of virtual productions, she noted.

As a result, she conceded, “we are learning just as much as you all are learning.”

Perforce is “very interested in learning how we can make improvements” to its tools “to better fit your workflows and your pipelines,” she told attendees, adding they shouldn’t see the tools as discussed and shown during the presentation as “best practices necessarily because those are still being developed” by the company.

 Using version control, production companies can store old versions of content while making sure that everybody within the production who needs to can access the latest version of the content but can still go back to prior versions if needed, Cole said.

Lindgren pointed out that those working on a production can use an old version of a piece of content if they want to do that. “That’s an important piece” of the equation, he said, adding: “You do still have that ability.” After all, there are times when those working on a production want to go back to a previous version of a scene to change the camera placement or something else, for example, he said.

 To view the entire presentation, click here.

The Hollywood Innovation and Transformation Summit event was produced by MESA in association with the Hollywood IT Society (HITS), Media & Entertainment Data Center Alliance (MEDCA), presented by ICVR and sponsored by Genpact, MicroStrategy, Whip Media, Convergent Risks, Perforce, Richey May Technology Solutions, Signiant, Softtek, Bluescape, Databricks, KeyCode Media, Metal Toad, Shift, Zendesk, EIDR, Fortinet, Arch Platform Technologies and Amazon Studios.