The real-time pipeline refers to the various stages of production required to add visual effects to a movie or game. In this blog, we are specifically talking about only real-time game engine content production. A pipeline helps organize each department so that every artist knows their role, and production can move within the allocated timeline and also help with file management in the production premise.
The smooth running of pipelines can help the company run smoothly, efficiently and output premium quality in very little time, improving the overall flow of the moviemaking process. The production process is divided into 3 parts; pre-production, production, and post-production. The pipeline influences all three of them, the majority of its impact in the last stage in the traditional VFX process, but in real-time, the emphasis changes to pre-production for efficient pipelines.
Need of a new pipeline for real-time movie
Real-time digital movie making is a process in which an entire movie can be done iteratively and faster than the visual effects process. Usually, in the traditional way of filmmaking, a lot of the work is carried out in post-production, wherein a team sits down together and goes over a film frame by frame to add in visual effects and final touches with a slow feedback rate as well as slow decision making which in turn results in poor efficiency.
Real-time digital moviemaking on the other hand allows information to be very iterative and allows us to make instantaneous changes. This fluidity is backed by a superior pipeline that we have come up with at Viga Entertainment that allows the entire process to be as efficient and fast and doesn’t compromise on quality in any way. In real-time movie-making pre-production is of extreme importance where the team sits and plans how it aims at executing the entire movie. Basically, making a skeleton of how it aims to get to the final product. Our pipeline allows the pre-production workflow to be iterative from a production planning and data management perspective.
An efficient pipeline's job is basically to transport a bunch of information over different software's which constitutes a very efficient manner of information flow. Moviemaking can include tons of data that have to be consolidated together to give it the final look and feel which we see on the screen, but eventually, since the entire movie is digitally produced, all the shots are data that has to be transported from one point to another in the most structured fashion. The system used for this transportation is what we call a pipeline.
Traditional moviemaking pipelines were built for VFX efficiency. When we look at real-time moviemaking, these long-accepted workflows can no longer be used as they are very cumbersome to use in modern times. Citing an example, imagine you are a director of a movie based on cars and are working on the design and texture of the car, and while going through the movie you notice an inconsistency in the texture which you would like changed, the pipeline allows the engineer in charge of the render to modify it to the desired version in such way that it reflects throughout the pipeline and allows better work rate, this is how efficient a pipeline can be. It is the backbone of the entire digital moviemaking process.
This is exactly what the engineers at Viga Entertainment Technology are coming up with, an exceptional pipeline to complement virtual moviemaking providing utmost organization and structure to enhance the efficiency of the entire process. Our tool in development Moviecolab can be integrated with hardware as well as project management and file systems. It is very well designed for real-time digital filmmaking as all assets are going to be ready in real-time when they come into the pipeline. It makes sure data flows from artist to artist in a real-time format where it uses universal scene descriptors from one software to another. There is also backward compatibility of data over different software like a blender to Unity engine or Unreal engine.
Ultimately, pipelines are needed in moviemaking to reduce the chaos and make an efficient movie by bringing order to the process. We are among the few people in the market to have a real-time moviemaking pipeline aided by custom plugins we have come up with to assist you in bringing your vision to the screen, allowing directors to make real-time decisions and feedback. This includes mobile apps for iOS and Android for real-time feedback to the artist. A combination of Virtual Production and Pipelines can shape the future of filmmaking, and we at Viga aim to do exactly that. Revolutionizing the space with our new pipeline software “Moviecolab” to integrate parts of the entire process to ease your workload. More details on the plugins, workflows, and ability to integrate into your studio pipelines will be coming out soon. Thank you.
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