Dreamspace: A Platform and Tools for Collaborative Virtual Production

Dreamspace will research, develop and demonstrate tools that enable creative professionals to combine live performances, video and computer-generated imagery in real time and collaborate to create imaginative entertainment and experiences.The film and TV industry is seeking ways of producing audiovisual media that combine the real world, CGI and 3D animation in real time, at a quality sufficient for major movies, but at a cost that is accessible to European film and TV companies. Meeting the demand will need advances on the state of the art in a wide range of areas, including the combination of 2D and 3D methods; depth and lighting capture; surround video; real-time depth-based processing and compositing; real-time high resolution rendering; and new approaches to manipulating CG objects and video in a virtual environment.The ability to assemble, try out, play with and even improvise virtual productions will have profound creative consequences for the media industry, performance groups and creative artists. One part of the Dreamspace ambition is therefore to make it possible for directors, designers and artists to build experiences directly from visual components, working together on set or in the performance space, and see the results immediately. The other is to explore and develop ways of using Virtual Production technologies to deliver new creative experiences.The goal is to create an environment and tools that make it possible to work with and combine all the elements in real time, at a high level of quality. We want to realise a 'dream machine' in which artists can drag and drop real world scenes and CGI to produce fusion worlds; move and control digital characters and scenes to explore and develop a story; switch viewpoints effortlessly, to see the action from the point of view of a different character; create complex visual effects with a fraction of the time and effort; and explore immersive experiences that expand perceptions of space and time.