Mike Afford Media Blog » Setanta Sports

Title music for iTalkSport

Mike — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 23:18:35 +0000

Here’s the full version of the new title music for the Setanta Sports show iTalkSport. I must have been too busy in the previous post writing about the new virtual studio set that I forgot to mention that I also did the theme tune.

Listen here:

iTalkSport title music

Virtual Studio Sets

Mike — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:55:43 +0000

Virtual Studio Sets

Recently completed – a brand new virtual studio set for Setanta’s iTalkSport show that launched on Friday.

iTalkSport is a late-night sport discussion programme and the set prominently features views of the Dublin skyline.

This virtual set project consisted of two main challenges – designing and building the actual structure of the set, and putting ‘live’ shots behind the presenters and guests.

It was a close call whether we would be using four permanently mounted roof-top cameras to feed the backgrounds. In the end we went for a less expensive (but more complicated!) solution. The whole thing is running on the RT Software tOG VR system, isn’t dependent on the weather, and has the uncanny feature of rendering street-lamps invisible.

I’ll give a full behind-the-scenes glimpse later on, but for now, here are some grabs from Friday’s show.

iTalkSport - Virtual Studio Set

Virtual Set

Mike — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 01:49:17 +0000

Virtual Set

Here’s my latest virtual set for Setanta Sports Ireland.

You can see it on some of the Magners League shows, and it’s also on air for ‘The Hub‘ with a different logo in the virtual screen.

As usual, it was built as a 3D model in Cinema 4D and then painstakingly textured up using my special secret process (which I may reveal as another blog post at some point).

Finally, it was exported as an fbx file which I loaded into tOG (by RT Software) for some final tweaks before the whole thing was zipped up and downloaded by Setanta at their end.

It was a pretty fast turnaround for this one – under a week to get it on air, with a few updates supplied after the first TX.

You can see more images here.

Latest VR Studio for Setanta Sports

Mike — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:47:37 +0000

I recently completed another virtual studio project for Setanta Sports in Dublin. This set is for their FA Cup programme – it went live on air a week or so ago.

Virtual Studio for Setanta FA Cup

The set was built in 3D using Cinema 4D. Rough lighting and a first pass texture set were all done in C4D. I always go through by hand using Photoshop to rework each texture – adding extra lighting effects, tweaking colours, cleaning up any errors and finally re-sizing to realtime-friendly pixel dimensions. The animated backgrounds in the virtual screens were made using images from the title sequence and a moving light effect I created in After Effects.

Then the whole model is exported as a .fbx file and imported into RT Software’s tOG 3D system. Once inside tOG, I can check the ordering of objects to make sure that any reflections and transparencies are being displayed correctly. This was particularly important for the FA Cup set as I’ve included some extra billboarded lighting effects with different blend functions which add a nice glow in some of the shots. Quite subtle in places, but it helps to make the virtual set more like the real thing.

Check out the TV section of my main site for more 3D graphics and virtual studio stuff.

Visit my main site’s VR Studio page for more virtual studio images.

Mike