I have recently been working for the German sports channel sportdigital designing a brand new multi-angle virtual studio set for their NewTek Tricaster. I was sent some footage yesterday showing two of the camera angles (more angles to follow when the new cameras arrive..!) and I’m really pleased to see that everything is working so nicely.
The design of the set was inspired by the sportdigital logo, with a lit section running through the middle of the studio, the outer step of the riser as the circle element, and the centre spot appearing as a lit section in the middle of the desk.
sportdigital Virtual Set
If you’re familiar at all with the quirks of virtual studios, and in particular NewTek’s TriCaster, you should be pleasantly surprised to see the talent resting his hands and paperwork on top of the desk. No mean feat as it turns out, since the entire desk is virtual in this case. Also, the talent is reflected in the virtual desk. Combining both of those effects is quite tricky really (I won’t give away all my secrets here, but if you are looking for a similar effect with your own TriCaster, please do get in touch and I will be happy to discuss options..!)
sportdigital Virtual Set
Actually – there’s quite a bit of fine detail going on in this set which would probably be lost on most casual viewers, but I do think it is the attention to detail that can help to make a virtual set look more convincing. Firstly, working closely with the client, we were able to match up the real and virtual camera angles quite nicely so the talent is positioned more or less correctly at the edge of the desk, and his hands can rest on top. The ‘holy grail’ of TriCaster sets is to combine this with a reflection of the talent which I’ve added to the shiny edge at the front of the virtual desk.
hands on desk with reflections
That’s not all that’s going on with the desk reflection though – every single layer behind is correctly reflected in the desktop, including the custom background, the midground, and the live input screens. This is true for all of the camera angles where the desk appears.
hands on desk with reflections
The last main feature of this set is the large background image right at the back. That is actually another customisable source (the client has added their own football stadium image), but it sits behind extra layers that provide some nice lighting effects, colour and shadows. It’s also reflected in the shiny surface of the riser platform, all automatically. It’s just another nice way of ’embedding’ all the custom elements into the set to give a nice realistic feel to the whole thing.
custom background images
The virtual studio set was all built in Cinema 4D, with additional Photoshop work on top, and supplied at 4K Ultra HD resolution so the team at sportdigital are able to zoom in for tight shots with no loss of quality. I’m very happy to have had the opprotunity to work with sportdigital and wish them all the very best with their new studio set.