Axibo PT4 Smart Motion System supports Unreal Engine for virtual backgrounds
[17:26 Thu,7.July 2022 by blip]
Virtual production is making a name for itself, mainly in high-end productions: instead of shooting on real locations, people shoot in the studio in front of artificial backgrounds, which - unlike in green screen shoots - are faded in and filmed in real time and in sync with the camera movements.
There are repeated attempts to adapt this on a smaller scale, but the hurdles remain high. A lot of computing power, know-how and hardware is needed, for example to be able to display the backgrounds large enough. Axibo now wants to offer a simplification with its new, automated PT4 camera motion system. It is equipped with a neural engine, offers intuitive object tracking and works together with the Unreal Engine via a plug-in. The latter enables functionalities for virtual production.
Axibo PT4 Smart Motion System
However, it is not clear from the website exactly how this works. Although the manufacturer provides a description of the PT4 system online, which is ideally mounted on an Axibo slider, there is no concrete information about the tracking function, the software (Axibo Studio) or the plugin for the UE. It only says that whoever buys the system and is interested in virtual production will be provided with the plugin upon mail request.
You can learn a little more only in the above "Influencer" video. According to this, PT4 is equipped with a small camera and thus able to track people or even other objects in image independently. The system can thus provide automatic camera tracking, for example.
Automatic object tracking
For the virtual production, in turn, the position of the camera or the movement of the motion control system is determined and a corresponding scene is then rendered in the Unreal Engine as a video (apparently a service provided by Axibo), which can then be played synchronized on a monitor in the background while the movement is repeatedly executed. An Axibo app handles the synchronization. For the virtual camera in the Unreal Engine, the desired sensor size and focal length used can be specified so that the image characteristics correspond to the real camera used in the field.
For a real, virtual "production", however, background sizes are needed, which will be prohibitively expensive in most cases; in the demo video, after all, it is only used for a product advertising shot.
The PT4 motion control system with slider supports heavier camera setups up to 10Kg and does not need to be balanced. For operation, there is an app for smartphones and computers or even a Playstation-like controller. Movements can be defined keyframe-accurately.
When complete, the Axibo PT4 camera motion system with slider and focus/zoom motor currently costs ,897. These seem to be discounted prices, but they still add up to a good chunk of money. Even more of a discount is available if you enter "makeartnow" as the discount code. However, there is a note that only a limited number of products are available. Whether these products are ready and ready for shipping is unclear.
Combined with the rather restrained info on the website, we get a somewhat mixed picture. How easy the whole thing actually is to use and how the interaction with the Unreal Engine works exactly should be known before a purchase in order to be able to assess the practical benefit for one's own work. Of course, the approach sounds interesting.
By the way, the manufacturer had already offered a simpler version on Kickstarter a few years ago, the Axibo Pan | Tilt | Slide: A.I. Powered Camera Assistant. It was delivered with considerable delays, and communication seemed to be a bit slow at that time. (via 4Kshooters
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