As a stage designer, I’m often one of the first links between the client and the production team. My job is to understand the client’s main goal and translate it into a stage that works as an event. And this is where many talented stage designers get stuck.
Instead of looking for the core idea, they try to copy the client’s words or match a reference image too literally. A client brings a mood, a feeling, a direction. Sometimes they bring one image they simply like. If you try just to copy it, the stage becomes a backdrop, not part of the story. A stage is not a background. A stage is the event’s environment. It sets the audience’s mood and helps viewers believe what they see. And it doesn’t matter if the stage is physical or virtual – the idea is the same. The stage has to work as a system.
So even when a client brings me a reference, I don’t see only a pretty image. I see a functional element the event will rely on: where the focus will go, how the space will support the performance, what can be built within the timeline and budget, and what makes more sense to build physically versus virtually.
What virtual production actually means
When I say “virtually,” I don’t mean a 3D picture placed behind the performer. I mean an approach where part of the stage exists in a digital environment, but it still works as a real stage inside the production process.
People often underestimate virtual stages. They treat them like a nice prop, or something you can add later. In reality, a virtual stage must be part of the concept from day one, because it defines how the frame works, where the focus is, how characters move, and more. In other words, we are designing not a background but a stage, just not all of it is made from wood and metal. Part of it is made from 3D models, textures, lighting, and real-time rendering. Modern virtual shows like the VTuber Awards are no longer just “a stream with an avatar.” They’re closer to full TV productions, mixing game-style visuals with live broadcast workflows, camera tracking, and real-time control.
The VTuber Awards
The VTuber Awards clearly show this mindset. VTuber culture is built on unique characters: each has their own lore, personality, style, and small details that fans recognise. So for me, it was important not to create a catchy 3D environment, but to build a world that supports the characters and feels true to the format.
At the centre of this setup is Unreal Engine. It’s where the show’s visuals are built: virtual environments, lighting, materials, effects, and animation. The key difference is that it runs in real time, so the world can react instantly during the broadcast.
I designed an underwater universe that matched the lore of one of the hosts and the overall event idea. To make it believable, we had to follow real-world rules: how light spreads in water, how movement reads on camera, and how air appears as bubbles. Without Unreal Engine, the space would have looked like a themed overlay instead of a living world. We planned how the world would feel, how the characters – digital avatars – would move, and how the audience would read it. I built the space with a virtual audience zone, live chat widgets that appeared on the stage, stream-style UI elements, and small on-screen overlays to support a true live-show feel.
For this event, the most important part wasn’t just the graphics, but how seamlessly the virtual world connected to the real studio. To make that work, we used camera tracking (for example, systems like stYpe). Tracking sends the camera’s real movement and lens data into Unreal Engine, so the virtual scene follows the camera exactly. That’s what makes the illusion believable: perspective stays correct, scale feels natural, and virtual objects look like they exist in the same space as the hosts or performers.
Live broadcast changes everything. In large-scale productions, Unreal Engine is often distributed across multiple machines, as was the case in our VTuber Awards setup. This is where the Disguise platform comes in, acting as both a media server and a show control system. Disguise coordinates multiple rendering nodes, manages timing and synchronisation, and routes output signals to different destinations—from LED screens to broadcast feeds. It unifies everything into a single system, helping ensure stability and predictable live output. Even with the best solutions, technical bottlenecks still happen. In those moments, the stage designer’s job is not to cling to one cool trick if it’s technically risky. The job is to protect the feeling and find another way to achieve the same result without breaking the broadcast.
That’s how we approached VTuber Awards when we hit technical limits with textures and system load. We didn’t drop the atmosphere—we found a solution that gave the audience the same effect with less risk in live.
Instead of final thoughts
Every year, virtual production gets more tools: real-time engines, smarter tracking, better lighting workflows, and faster AI. But the real question is not “What new tech can we add?”, it’s “What should be virtual in the first place?”
If you treat virtual elements like decoration, they will look like decoration. If you treat them like real space, designed for camera, scale, light, movement, and live timing, they start to feel believable. And just like in physical stage design, you have to choose solutions that can actually carry your idea. On a real set, you don’t pick materials that can’t hold the weight of the construction. In virtual production, the same logic applies: you don’t pick tech or assets that can’t survive real-time rendering and live broadcast. The goal is to choose the method that supports the concept and keeps it stable under production pressure.
This article originally appeared in the July/August issue of TVBEurope, available to download here.
