Impossible Objects Reimagines Automotive Production
Virtual production lab Impossible Objects’ new demo film illustrates how, along with Unreal Engine, the lab is re-engineering the manner in which automotive commercials are produced. With real-time filmmaking and virtual production, there is more freedom to be innovative than ever.
Shooting a car spot no longer has to mean trying to control the uncontrollable, at the whim of unpredictable weather and shifting light. With the help of NVIDIA, Unreal Engine, and Dell Technologies, the artist/technologists at IO are able to visualise vehicles in the most surreal scenarios, and in ways previously only thought possible in live-action. With the ability to build any world in real time, see any light or colour combination, and with no concern over physical safety, using custom rigs and animation, the most insane drifts and impossible speeds become completely manageable.
Says IO founder Joe Sill: “We made this demo primarily because many of our clients are still learning or becoming familiar with virtual production and want a fuller understanding of all that’s possible. We know it’s not enough to just talk about the efficiencies – we wanted to really paint the picture of just how innovative we can be with these projects, and how we can collaborate on exciting new work together.”
Says Rick Champagne, global media and entertainment industry strategy and marketing lead at NVIDIA: “Virtual production requires a synergy between the most powerful tools available and the innovative artists finding new ways to use them. The Impossible Objects team is evolving virtual production as they harness the power of NVIDIA RTX and Unreal Engine to introduce new ways of crafting cutting-edge imagery for the automotive and advertising industries.”
With traditional CGI, linear pipelines stand in the way of creatives being able to make magical in-the-moment creative decisions due to lengthy rendering pipelines and wait times. Instead, IO’s custom automotive rig blueprints enable creatives to rig any vehicle with an accurate sense of weight and movement, and drive them through any virtual environment their imagination can dream up.
IO’s virtual production partner NantStudios has also perfected the art of bringing talent and vehicles onto its LED volume stage to create fully controlled surroundings for photographing car interiors, exteriors, and talent without the compromise of sunlight, permitting, or weather conditions. Now, bringing a physical camera into the virtual world is not just possible, it's preferred. And with this latest technology, it appears that even the sky is no longer the limit.
