MARS Studios, a purpose-built Mixed Augmented Reality Studio, has opened its doors to the global creative industries. On MARS, virtual 3D environments are mapped onto an LED stage, enabling performers, actors, presenters and products to be blended into a photo-real or imaginary virtual environment in real time.
Created by Bild Studios, MARS combines video game engines, camera-tracking technology, xR workflows powered by disguise and LED screens to create an immersive performance stage and studio. The benefits of the natural lighting provided by the LED and the director’s ability to update any scene on the fly in real-time also help to give performers a visual reference and the means to orient themselves, in contrast to a traditional green screen, where visual elements are added in post-production.
MARS is suitable for filmmakers, broadcasters, event and brand experience designers, games developers and others who need access to Extended Reality (xR), Mixed Reality (MR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Production studio facilities.
To provide a taster of the kind of immersive art events of the future that will be shot on MARS, British art historian, BBC presenter and BAFTA nominated broadcaster, Dr James Fox worked closely with the creative team at The Experience Machine and the technical and production teams at Bild Studios. The piece, named “Masterpiece: Nighthawks” places James Fox within Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, his famous 1942 oil on canvas painting that portrays four people in a downtown diner late at night as viewed through the diner’s window.
In Masterpiece the 3D representation of Hopper’s painting was created as carefully extracted 3D geometry with detailed layers of texturing added; partly handmade, partly AI-generated, that would resemble the brush strokes and fine crafting of Edward Hopper’s unique painting style. Finally, the 3D scene was imported into the game engine Unreal Engine and rendered in real-time based on the position of the physical film camera on the MARS stage.
MARS is the creation of renowned media technologists Bild Studios, and can be adpated for use in current Covid-19 pandemic. Visual content can be produced without the need to travel to exotic locations and our work can be carried out while maintaining the social distancing practices that have become so important in recent months, and also the environmental benefits of dramatically reducing the need for power which large-scale onsite productions always consume.