I was very pleased to be sent a few grabs earlier this week from INTEL showing a new virtual studio set I designed for them a little while back. Great to see it in action and working so nicely.
The studio set runs on a TriCaster, and has a large ‘virtual’ studio space with a number of monitors that are set up to take either a live input, or a static source. I made a load of different camera angles for them including seated positions for discussions like those shown here, and also a number of standing positions with a desk for demo-ing products.
image © Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd
Apart from adding some depth of field on the close-ups, there’s a couple of other interesting little touches I’ve incorporated into this set.
Firstly, I’ve managed to reflect the talent and all of the monitors in the floor, even though the floor surface is producing quite diffuse/blurry reflections and also has a slightly ‘scuffed’ texture running over the whole thing. The effect on the wide-shot is quite convincing I think.
image © Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd
Also, the set makes use of the fact that the floor immediately surrounding the seated talent is real – and can be replaced by a larger section of carpet for bigger discussions. The front edge of the raised plinth is virtual though – it’s actually a separate live input that is loaded with a special source image and so can be resized to match the real carpet edge (or rather, the part of the carpet which is cropped out of frame on the camera).
Similarly, the standing position with the desk (not shown here) uses a real desktop which is also cropped ever so slightly on the camera to get a nice straight edge, allowing it to line up perfectly with the virtual desk base. (I hope to get some images of this to show you at some point, because it is quite a nice solution).
I also produced a little motion graphics sequence in After Effects as a title to be used in conjunction with this set.
If you’re interested in getting a custom TriCaster studio set for your company then please feel free to contact me here at Mike Afford Media, or head over to my new Virtual Studio Sets website where I have ‘TriCaster-ready’ studios for download and am also taking on bespoke studio design projects under the VirtualStudioSets.com banner.