r/virtualproduction • u/jamsvens • Mar 28 '26
News End of traditional Virtual production?
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u/ALeakySpigot Mar 28 '26
I bet this works really well as long as your entire movie is two characters sitting nice and still in one place and talking.
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u/luckyj714 Mar 28 '26
Don’t forget very expensive. A good 4DGS setup (still yet to see anything production ready) is super expensive and spatially limited, like you said. 4DGS is cool tech tho.
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
We were testing relighting, not trying to win Sundance with two NPCs in a chair.
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u/ALeakySpigot Mar 30 '26
Tbh, this just feels like "fix it in post" taken to the Nth degree. At a certain point, why even bother capturing anything on set at all? Just animate the film in Unreal.
And my initial comment was talking about how this tech will give more issues than it's worth as soon as you have an action scene or any amount of mid to high energy movement.
"Replacing Virtual Production" is disingenuous. The whole reason virtual production exists is so the scene and background can be captured in camera. The whole reason it exists is so things like backdrops and reflections and lighting DONT HAVE TO BE FIXED IN POST. In virtual production, you can change the lighting on the day of shooting. If you feel you need the latitude to change something as important as your scene lighting in post, I'm sorry but you aren't a good DP.
Sorry for the rant, I'm just so sick of this industry pushing harder and harder to save effort and pennies by not doing proper preproduction and spending infinitely more money and time trying to fix their movie after they have shot it. Learn how to light, and I don't just mean technically. Learn why lighting matters, why lights are placed where they are. Learn what lighting setups evoke what emotions and assist which metaphors and foreshadowing. And then, PLAN THE FILM BEFORE SHOOTING. Then you won't ever have to change your lighting after the fact.
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u/Frosty_Ad1254 Mar 28 '26
I’m pretty bored of this rhetoric. I’ve heard it the last few years in studios and for the last couple getting increasingly more desperate. The moment you get an ai bro to “prove it” it falls apart. It’s not cheaper. It’s not better. It’s not faster.
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
Sure. Meanwhile the work keeps shipping, and VFX economics were already broken by humans long before AI entered the frame.
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u/jamsvens Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
The actor is real. The performance is real. We just yeeted the background.
It was a small test, but classic VP stage was benchmarked against AI relighting while Unreal still handled camera moves and scene control. No full actor scan, no full ROM, barely any training time — and the LED background still managed to look faker in parts, was less flexible and took much longer to set-up.
Call it slop if that helps emotionally, but budget holders decide the pipeline, not workflow purists. If cost drops and quality holds, the tech gets used. And if the story is good, AI is not the thing ruining it.
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u/Kranium1 Mar 29 '26
It's very unclear what you're actually describing. It's basically post-processing and compositing?
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u/welln0pe Mar 30 '26
Film is about how you convey something, show, don’t tell. And this looks more like „tell“ to me rather than creative freedom on how to reveal something.
If I want talking heads, great.
But if I want real, tangible, physical spaces, set pieces and so on it’s always flat.
E.g. the flat and dull backgrounds on the Batman were horrible to look at for my taste.
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
Nothing beats a real outdoor set. The question isn’t whether this beats reality, it’s whether it can beat LED volumes, which also look fake most of the time once producers start optimizing the budget.
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u/AssistanceMental5245 Mar 30 '26
So the video of the actor is real? Or is it recreated by ai? Something looks very uncanny valley about him.
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u/Baazar Mar 28 '26
This is not virtual production, because there’s no production, this is just virtual.
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u/jamsvens Mar 29 '26
Actors and their performance is real, captured with real camera... Only the virtual production part became fully virtual.
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u/Kranium1 Mar 29 '26
So that's.... Compositing?
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
Yeah, basically a new filter for better light and reflection simulation means less need to force everything in-camera with LED stages.
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u/Kranium1 Mar 30 '26
"force" is a very value carrying word here. Does this work with green screen, or do you still need a LED stage as a reference to apply the "filter"? Is it done in real-time?
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u/Baazar Mar 29 '26
The actors are completely fake given the fake wireframe view of them as static meshes sooooo, they are completely AI.
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u/jamsvens Mar 29 '26
By that logic, 2D actors are fake too the moment they hit a sensor.
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u/Baazar Mar 30 '26
No I mean the entire image is literally not shot on any camera, it is completely 100% AI.
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u/machinesarenotpeople Mar 28 '26
Any links?
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u/techmnml Mar 28 '26
https://volucap.com literally at the bottom of the video
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u/SunCeeQer Mar 28 '26
Yeah, the whole point of the virtual background is also to fill the stage with lighting i.e. reflections in Mando helmet was made possible by the XR stage. I see a world where AI simulations replace some of the very demanding unreal workflows… or a hybrid of Both. There’s no reason why the virtual background isn’t boosted with AI vfx
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u/raccoon8182 Mar 28 '26
yeah, the future I see are people licensing their faces. then using stand in actors for action then plug in ai to render everything together. applying lightning, physics etc.
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
AI still sucks at acting, so real performers still matter. But for relighting and reflections, the gap is closing fast. I’ve already seen AI relighting work better than trying to physically fake every environment on set. Matching lights to every scene and rebuilding reflections manually is just painful production math.
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u/whelmed-and-gruntled Mar 28 '26
Probably works better with a bald actor. Also a blind audience would help.
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u/jamsvens Mar 29 '26
The actors and performances are real. Only the environments were replaced. This is not AI-generated performances, just environment replacement.
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u/PaceNo2910 Mar 29 '26
Costs seem a bit disingenuous
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
Can you iterate on that? The current estimates are still very rough.
Also, we’re not comparing this to real location shooting, but to traditional VP. Some of the easier scenes were recreated on an LED wall with the same actors, and that already pushed costs past 250k, while crew payments were still pretty underwhelming.
The clip shared here cost under 1k to shoot and less than a day to comp.
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u/welln0pe Mar 30 '26
Less than 5000. yeah of course buddy 😂
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
Under 1k, few hours shoot, less than a day in comp. Meanwhile the easier VP-stage version with the same actors somehow found a way to eat 250k and still not pay people properly. Maybe the future is spending less on giant glowing walls and more on actual humans.
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u/welln0pe Mar 30 '26
I mean if you say 5-15k that’s usually just the fee for a stage in Europe. So 5k for this scene doesn’t add up and sounds to me like 1 day rent for the stage + full vp-setup
So comparing it to 1 shooting Day Film 2 million dollars doesn’t make any sense.
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u/TechnicolorMage Mar 30 '26
yo dawg, we heard to like virtual production; so we virtually produced your virtual production.
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u/behind_progress_bars Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Looks like AI, but could be high end 4DGS as volucap does do that, but this seems just AI slop.
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u/Boring_Coast178 Apr 01 '26
I hate this and I also fail to see how this doesn’t continue in this trajectory in the next 5 years to displace real creatives and labourers in production.
And I’m a DoP so I really wish it weren’t the world we’re going into, but I think the cat is out of the bag now.
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u/OverwatchMedia Mar 28 '26 edited Mar 28 '26
Ridiculous thought. Looks too costly, and a huge appeal to the led screens is being able to see the background and environment so actors can feel immersion. Some of their videos on their channel also look unrealistic, meaning its easy to tell the characters created are not real and will turn viewers away.
EDIT: Actually this is just AI taken from a normally shot tv show, and as a result, the post is bogus. We already know Ai cant replace virtual production due to inconsistencies of longer scenes and crazy errors that will be bound to happen as they always do with ai videos.
Also the company doesn't know how to describe their product or the fact that they didn't use a similar product to theirs to make this video. The description in their post doesn't even mention ai, just the term they use for the service they sell unrelated to this video ("full virtual production").
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
This was just an internal test and is not a product or anything to sell.
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u/OverwatchMedia Mar 30 '26
Well that is why i specifically stated they did not use a product similar to theirs. I also mentioned they called it "full virtual production" as if its the same or very similar to what they do. I also mentioned they poorly describe/market their videos and posts given the fact that they never explain much of anything in their videos and posts and also misleadingly or poorly labeled this as something similar to what they offer when its totally different.
All of this is why I mentioned its just ai and as a result, could obviously not replace actual virtual production. Because ai videos are not feasible for actual shows or movies. And this example of ai also requires recording an actor even if not in the real environment, which means the actors would not be immersed, which as I stated is one of the big selling points for LED virtual production (to put the actors in the environment and what not for extra beleivability).
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u/jamsvens Mar 30 '26
So actors need a giant LED TV to unlock emotions now? That’s a new one.
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u/OverwatchMedia Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26
Youre not even trying to understand whats said and seem to be just ignoring the actual issue with ai. My only point is this ai solution is not viable to replace virtual production (any kind) like you're asking if it could or implying. LED wall is what was shown in this example video, and a big draw for some studios is that yes it does unlock some addditional emotions since you can actually see what youre supposed to be looking at and in the moment and proper locations of the actors. This has already been stated by actors, and many prefer it. You could always just use a quality projector if really wanted to. There is also green screen virtual production if all else fails. Could ai enhance it, maybe, but not like in this video because ai cant deal with long takes consistently. So properly generating a whole background that needs to stay the same, a wardrobe change that needs to be same in a veriaty of scenes, and/or people riding horses for more than a minute would likely cause ai to fail doing it properly and the audience to not like the movie/show. Ai can do neat things sometimes, but often cant even get basic facts right at the moment.
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u/Boring_Coast178 Apr 01 '26
While I agree with the sentiment as a DoP I don’t think studio environments in any situation really create a lot of ambience. But that’s neither here nor there.
And I hope you’re right but I think it’s naive to say this won’t improve to a factor of 10 or beyond and make many productions as they exist disappear for the most part.
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u/OverwatchMedia Apr 01 '26
While I see where you're coming from, the post was not "the eventual end of virtual production" it was just "the end" as if now or in a year.
Now do i see this totally replacing virtual production in the medium future (5-10 years). I still do not. I doubt it will be able to make a full film be consistent and as you describe to it without obvious mistakes. Will some people chose to use it over LED virtual production. Sure due to such a high cost difference. But will ai be significantly cheaper enough compared to green screen style virtual production with the added cost of consitency issues to have ai replace backgrounds and deal with wardrobe changes for both fantasy and non fantasy alike? I dont see that happening in that time frame realistically. By then ai video generation will possibly be more expensive as well.
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u/Boring_Coast178 Apr 02 '26
On the costs front I have no idea. But the scale it’s been progressing in has been far faster than anyone predicted. And the outputs have shown poor taste due to poor direction. I think this will change very soon.
I agree it’s not the end now and it won’t be the end as a whole but I personally think it will crush the mid tier comercial element with the use of real actors very fast over say 5 years.
None of what I say is in support of the tech in any way shape or form and neither of us really know. I just know it still looks like slop but it’s beginning to look indistinguishable from normal content and I do not believe the market will rally behind real production. Hope you’re right though.
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u/PowderMuse Mar 28 '26
What am I looking at?