LONDON – With expertise in many areas, The Foundry has set its sights on the next biggest challenge in content creation: virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR).
At NAB 2015, the company will preview technologies that address specific challenges presented by VR/AR content creation.
The Foundry developed these technologies based on internal R&D, technology partnerships and collaboration with more than 30 of the biggest players in media and entertainment. Already, The Foundry’s NUKE is a critical component of a majority of all VR/AR content created today.
“New Deal Studios has been hard at work pushing the limits of VR technology. We are working with some of the brightest minds, like The Foundry, to try and solve immersive live action experiences as a natural progression of our long experience in film and commercials,” said Jeff Jaspers, Digital FX Supervisor & CTO, New Deal Studios, creators of The Mission, Kaiju Fury and the NHL Experience.
“For VR/AR to cross into the broader market, it must provide the viewer, regardless of environment, with high quality content and a new, exciting experience,” said Bill Collis, chief executive officer, The Foundry. “Our goal is to focus squarely on the creation of live action immersive content and how we leverage our areas of expertise. We’re starting with a proven base, NUKE, which is currently the only platform that natively supports the compositing of multi-camera live action. From there, we’re looking at the unique challenges presented by live, immersive content to help our clients push VR/AR from niche to mainstream.”
The Foundry has worked together with its VFX clients on new tools and workflows to manipulate and composite live-action VR in NUKE. The Foundry will preview new experimental tools and workflows at NAB including:
● Calibration and stitching of live-action 360 footage from multi-camera rigs
● Live connection to Oculus Rift to review stitching, grading and depth
● Support for compositing with ray-trace rendering for CG placement and projections
● Spherical aware operations and viewing with equirectangular images