Handheld Virtual Camera

At SIGGRAPH 2017 I attended a talk by John Knoll, VFX supervisor at ILM, where he outlined his work on Rogue One. One bit of technology that I found very interesting was his team’s use of a handheld virtual camera. This was an iPad like device that allowed Gareth Edwards, the director, to fly through a scene to capture unique camera angles of a CG scene. The example used was the space battle scene at the planet portal where the camera flies alongside a group of X-wings in a very natural path as they dive towards the portal. In the past this would have gone through extensive storyboarding, and a group of artists would have keyframed the camera, reviewing the sequence for several iterations before final approval. With this technology Gareth was basically able to iterate instantly over a couple camera flight paths, choose his favorite, and pass actual motion track information to the production crew.

This is a great example of a ton of technology enabling a very natural and artistic workflow for a director. Now how do I make one!?