With the emergence of cutting-edge technologies and advancements in GPU computing power, the film, advertising, and music video industries have increasingly adopted various virtual production techniques.
Leveraging these technologies helps overcome weather and environmental challenges while significantly reducing film production costs, enhancing visual richness and flexibility. However, the cumbersome pre-production communication and complex post-production processes continue to pose a major challenge for the entertainment industry.
In pursuit of a new generation of virtual filmmaking processes that streamline and enhance efficiency, Luputa Studio and Cogito Marketing specializing in TV commercials and music video production, have joined forces with Leadtek to explore the use of NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise collaboration platform.
Revolutionize conventional video production with NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise
Despite the increasing prevalence of virtual production studios in TV commercials and music videos, Luputa Sun, CEO of Luputa Studio believes that the post-production process remains arduous.
Echoing this sentiment, Director Jesse Chu of Cogito Marketing adds that pre-production discussions for traditional TV commercials and music videos typically occur through paper-based exchanges, making it challenging to precisely coordinate ideas among multiple parties.
Breaking free from conventional film production models, the collaboration between the two seeks to promote virtual production technology and revolutionize the filmmaking process. By harnessing digital tools, they aim to enhance production efficiency and optimize cost utilization, all while reducing the ecological footprint.
For example, when a given project requires a large tree model to be added to a scene, different departments are going to have different definitions and ways of expression, thus leading to to significant time spent on confirmations.
Additionally, estimating the exact area required for the scene setup is difficult, and budgeting is often based on the largest potential scene size. However, during actual shooting, the camera’s focus might be limited to a specific section instead of the entire landscape, resulting in cost inefficiencies and contradicting current environmental awareness goals.
In addition to pre-production challenges, advertisement productions often face limited actor availability, leading to the use of virtual studios for filming, followed by post-production work using 3D technology.
And you guessed it, more time spent on confirmation on the client’s side plus amendments which is often than none.
Luputa Sun further explains, “Due to the large file sizes, uploading and downloading alone can be very time-consuming. Furthermore, after clients or directors provide feedback on the video, even if the animation team completes the modifications the next day, it takes at least three days for the entire feedback loop. In case of further revisions, the entire process must start all over again, making the post-production phase extremely time-consuming. Therefore, we have been eager for a change.”
But everything changed when Jesse Chu found Leadtek demonstrating the power of NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise – the one platform they had been seeking for so long.
NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise contributes massive acceleration in 3D production
As 3D production software technologies mature and computing power increases, 3D production has become the dominant format across various industries that can really test teams’ collaborative design capabilities.
With the advent of the remote work era prompted by the pandemic, the virtual production process often necessitates the collaboration of multiple software tools, and discrepancies in file formats pose significant challenges to seamless virtual collaboration.
Here’s where NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise presented by Leadtek comes in by providing a full collaboration and simulation platform that can effectively connect remote teams to work harmoniously and efficiently with different unique tools, thereby creating a more productive working environment.
Luputa Sun himself is experienced with 3D tools yet highlights that each function has its unique characteristics, making it inevitable to use multiple software tools for virtual production. In the past, with limited technology, cooperative work was nearly impossible. However, after adopting NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise, which supports various mainstream 3D tools and enables cross-team members to edit the same scene on one platform, along with the use of NVIDIA RTX series professional graphics cards in the backend, rendering tasks can be completed in minutes.
This means that during online meetings, responses to feedback from directors and clients can be immediate, eliminating the prolonged back-and-forth revision process and potentially saving at least 50% of the time.
Motion Board is best created with Omniverse Machinima
Furthermore, the NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise collaboration and simulation platform features the built-in Omniverse Machinima trial version, offering numerous modules, functions, and databases to allow technical artists, content creators, and professionals to produce high-quality movie or game-like visuals using high-fidelity rendering techniques and tools.
Additionally, the dynamic motion capture feature utilizes the new artificial intelligence posture prediction function supported by NVIDIA Maxine AR SDK. With it, design teams can capture human movements using mobile devices or web cameras to simulate the movements of 3D animated characters close to real life.
The platform also includes the NVIDIA MDL material library, granting surfaces, materials, and textures of characters and settings a lifelike appearance. Coupled with the multi-GPU-supported Omniverse RTX renderer, hyperrealistic scenes can be created faster and more effortlessly than ever before.
“Omniverse Machinima’s robust capabilities enable us to produce motion boards with the least cost and time, greatly improving pre-production communication,” says Jesse Chu. This aspect alone represents a significant milestone. Before shooting, actors can refer to demo videos, which aids in reducing the time needed to immerse themselves in the required scenarios, marking a significant advancement in virtual filmmaking.
Quoting a simple math comparison, a once 3-4 minute demo video would need 4 people and 1 week time would now be accelerated to just one day, drastically saving money and time.
As a long-term partner of NVIDIA, Leadtek exclusively provides the NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise experience platform while providing the service of pre-installing necessary software and related design tools so that clients can instantly utilize the collaboration platform.
And yes, all of these can be remotely accessed through a simple web browser via Leadtek’s NVIDIA Omniverse Enterprise Test Drive service. The hardware that operates the service is a NVIDIA-certified system with WinFast GPU servers loaded with NVIDIA RTX professional GPUs.
Click the link below to try out the service.
