Just a quick heads up to say the new Mike Afford Media promo reel is finally online. You can choose to watch it here on mikeafford.com which should be viewable (thanks to the miracle that is HTML5 with Flash fallback) on most browers and certain shiny smartphones. Or if you prefer you can always head over to the Mike Afford Media YouTube Channel and watch it there, or check the slightly higher quality version over on Vimeo
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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.
Just a quick reminder that the Broadcast Video Expo opens on the 16th February at Earls Court in London.
It’’s one of the biggest UK technology events for broadcasters, audio and video manufacturers and suppliers, and anyone interested in production, post & delivery.
And of course, don’t forget to visit Booth B24 and have a chat with our good friends at RT Software.
RT Software develops and supplies PC-based real time 3D graphics solutions for broadcasters. These solutions are aimed at sports, news, elections, interactive TV, virtual sets and for playout graphics.
Visit the RT Software site now for Real-time 3D graphics broadcast solutions.
Virtual Set
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.
Conference : 10-14 September
Exhibition : 11-15 September
Although I won’t be able to make it over to Amsterdam for IBC this year, I thought I might just give a quick heads up to all you media types that my old pals from RT Software are exhibiting again this year. RT Software’s tOG 3D system is the technology behind some of my virtual studios and many of the real-time election graphics that appear on my site.
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. …read more
