Industrial Light and Magic has released a new video offering a glimpse of the technology enhancements used on the virtual production of Disney Plus’ The Mandalorian.
The video includes contributions from numerous people involved in the series, including showrunner Jon Favreau and members of the ILM team.
The video details the enhancements made to ILM’s StageCraft virtual production technology.
“We’ve essentially built a platform that we can continue to build on, from scouting to virtual cameras, motion capture performance and LED volume content,” explains Francois Chardavoine, VP Technology, Lucasfilm.
Janet Lewin, SVP/general manager at ILM adds, “We currently use Unreal in the design phase and for previs. We use Houdini, 3D Studio Max, Maya and any best in class visual effects tool to create photoreal virtual environments for the Volume.”
According to The Mandalorian showrunner Jon Favreau, the latest version of StageCraft forced the production into having a more efficient workflow that draws pre-production, post production and production all into one continuous pipeline.”
“There are certain shots where you have live action in the foreground, you have a miniature shoot that was texture mapped onto the geometry of a digital environment on the wall and in the deep background are stop motion figures that are moving around,” adds Favreau. “So you have all the different layers of techniques that come together to hopefully feel like one combined environment, all in real time.”
