Each month we will be doing overviews of studios offering virtual production services. This month we look at two virtual production facilities—one in Downtown Brooklyn, NY—ZeroSpace, and one in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, CA—XR Stage. In the coming months we will look at other spaces as well as take deeper dives into each of these facilities about their work providing virtual production services for film, television, commercials, concerts, live events, and more. Let us know if there are facilities and VP service providers you think we should spotlight as well.
ZeroSpace, Brooklyn, NY
ZeroSpace, in partnership with 4Wall Entertainment, is a virtual production facility that features a fixed-install LED XR Stage, a Vicon Motion Capture Stage, and 40,000 sq. ft. of rentable warehouse space. It is one of the largest industrial production stages in Brooklyn for film/photo shoots and live event production. In addition to virtual production work, ZeroSpace is actively creating content and incubating R&D projects focused on bringing the Metaverse to reality.
“ZeroSpace is a 50,000+ sq. ft. production facility in Downtown Brooklyn, NY,” says Jon Kreutzer CEO & Founder | ZeroSpace. “We have multiple different stages and loading bays that are all accessible, but the crowning jewel is our XR LED wall, which is done in partnership with our friends at 4Wall. It’s a half hexagon configuration with an LED floor, disguise workflow, and multiple cameras. We are a cutting edge content studio, fully equipped to create interactive content, produce commercials, film TV shows & movies, hold events, and any other production that requires immersive virtual environments. We also recently did an ICVFX workshop with Lux Machina and Epic at our facility.”
Kreutzer comments that they’ve been “experimenting with this workflow since early days in the pandemic. Here at ZeroSpace, we’ve taken the LED screen replacement technology idea and the XR idea and have started to expand on it. We’ve added a Vicon Motion Capture Stage here as well, which is separate from the LED wall, but allows us to take full, real time motion capture. We also have two photogrammetry rigs, so you can get 4D, almost volumetric capture. We have an immersive 30’ diameter projection dome for scanning and for projections as well as a whole lot of other great gear here at the facility; a lot of toys to play with. We’re starting to blend and integrate all of these different tools that weren’t necessarily designed to live in the same space, starting to integrate those workflows to get them to work together in a virtual production workflow sense.”
Having gear is great, but you need to have a team that knows how to use and deploy that technology and gear for virtual production to make it all work. Kreutzer agrees, saying, “We have an amazing team of brilliant artists, engineers, and developers. We’re very fortunate with the team that we’ve put together, they are among the best and we enjoy working through all these technologies and workflows and figuring things out.”
ZeroSpace xR Stage Specifications:
Stage Dimensions: 13’ H x 38’ W x 24’ D. The video equipment in this xR Stage includes 224 Absen PL2.5 Pro REC 2020 LED panels, full HDR and measures 13’ H x 38’ W. The LED floor consists of 180 ROE Visual Black Marble BM4 Matte LED panels that measures 20’ D x 40’ W. All processing is from Brompton Technology. The media servers are disguise VX2 & RX2 models. Also available are disguise VX4 and RXII media servers and they use stYpe RedSpy camera tracking systems and a Blackmagic Design camera package. Kreutzer adds that “ZeroSpace has a great relationship with Unreal Engine. ZeroSpace is an Authorized Service Partner with Unreal. We’re also a disguise Metaverse Labs partner, one of their first.”
The lighting rig in the space includes 16 Arri S60 SkyPanels With Snap Grids; 15 High End Systems Lone Star LED moving lights; 6 High End Systems Sola HyBeam 3000 LED moving lights; 11 CHAUVET LED ellipsoidals; 28 CHAUVET Rogue R2X Wash LED; all run by an ETC EOS console.
The ZeroSpace facility is comprised of four interconnected studio spaces, and two privately gated parking lots. Each Studio space can be rented individually or grouped together for package rates. Featured elements of the studio spaces include mostly column-free spaces; avg. 25’+ ceiling heights; four loading docks granting immediate venue access; 1,600A of 3 phase cam-lock power; and an elevated production office / conference space.
www.zerospace.co
XR Stage, Pacoima, CA
Located in Pacoima, CA is XR Stage, with purpose-built In-Camera Visual FX (ICVFX) volumes designed for film, television, commercials, and live events and capable of supporting any and all virtual production needs. In addition to the stages at this 35,000 sq. ft. facility, XR Stage also offers mobile virtual production stages that can go onsite at locations for remote virtual production work.
XR Stage uses in-camera visual effects with real-time LED environments, to produce work that looks photo-real. Through high quality in-camera fine pixel pitch LED screens, realistic lighting and reflections, which is impossible to produce with standard green screens, XR Stage provides much more efficiency than shooting on location. They have best in class real-time VFX systems through integrating LED screens, Unreal Engine, disguise workflow, and stYpe RedSpy camera tracking, in an HDR 10bit pipeline.
XR Stage provides pre-installed, or custom live-action LED volumes with real-time hardware and software control for virtual production projects. Their LED volumes are designed and engineered by a team of seasoned professionals utilizing the most leading-edge technology. Isaac Campos, CEO of XR Stages notes, “Our team who supports our production systems are second to none. They have the experience and expertise to work on the most demanding projects and do just that everyday.”
Campos further explains, “At XR Stages, we have both the disguise pipeline, and the Unreal pipeline, and we can switch seamlessly from one to the other. A lot of studios are built with one or the other, but we have both here. We could do 2D or 3D processes; whatever a client requires. We have disguise VX4 media servers as well as Silverdraft Supercomputer Demon servers.”
XR Stage Specifications:
The main, turnkey volume at XR Stage currently is a 40’ x 100’ stage. “We have a 75’ wide x 20’ high LED wall that’s made of Triton MA 2.6 LED panels. It’s set up about 40’ in diameter. We have an LED ceiling of ROE Visual CB5,” says Campos. “The ceiling can be changed to a different LED upon request. The LED floor comes in and out; it all depends on what the client wants to produce in the space. With the commercials we do, they don’t often want the floor, but for music videos, which are increasing, they do want to use an LED floor. It comes in and out as requested, so it’s currently not permanent.”
As noted Campos has put together a strong team. When you work with XR Stage, you get a team that can help guide you through the virtual production workflow to realize your intended goals. Included with the stage rental is the use of the stage LED volume facility and technology, two LED Technicians, two System Technicians/Operators, and one Project Manager. “Also, we have added Simon Ananya as our VFX Operator,” explains Campos. “Simon has a deep background in virtual production and he can really lead these projects.”
Support facilities are also important and each rental includes 15 parking spaces, two support rooms, bathrooms, air conditioning, Wi-Fi, and power. Campos notes that he has a lot of on site parking availability at his facility, which is very important in Southern California. “That is something that clients ask for, sure technology’s part of it, but they want to make sure we have plenty of parking. If you don’t have enough, you lose jobs. We have about 125 parking spots; it’s a large parking lot with parking for semi-trucks as well, for unloading, etc. We’ve got another 6,000 sq. ft. of production offices as well as green rooms and makeup rooms. We want to be able to fully support productions who want to work here.”
www.xrstage.com
