NAB 2011: Vizrt, MAC Team Up to Simplify Virtual Sets

Vizrt and Motion Analysis Corporation (MAC) have entered a partnership to promote and market their combined offers.  Visitors to MAC’s booth (#SL3805) at the 2011 NAB show will see an HD virtual studio demonstration, featuring MAC’s CamTrak working with two Viz Engine 3.5 real-time rendering engines outputting HD-SDI graphics created in Viz Virtual Studio.

While virtual sets offer limitless creative options for live 2D/3D sets, the calibration and alignment of multiple cameras with the synthetic set can be a prohibitively complex and time-consuming process.  But Viz Virtual Studio minimizes this complexity by providing an intuitive user interface and compatibility with most major camera-tracking solutions.

CamTrak provides motion tracking of studio cameras and virtual set systems, such as Viz Virtual Studio.  Viz

“This Vizrt/MAC solution provides a cost-effective, intuitive way for broadcasters to track multiple studio cameras and align each camera view with the 3D graphical scene so that proper perspective is always maintained regardless of how cameras are moved or switched during the live program,” says Tom Whitaker, Chairman and CEO for Motion Analysis Corporation. “When used with Viz Virtual Studio, CamTrak allows studio cameras to be setup and aligned quickly and automatically—without traditional hardware-based calibration headaches—to produce accurate, realistic virtual sets for live broadcast.”

CamTrak software tracks the placement of “marker arrays” on studio cameras and aligns that motion data in accordance with the optical axis of the virtual camera.  That same motion data is automatically mapped to multiple cameras, which rove freely within a 40 to 50 foot area, to coordinate their views of the same 3D virtual scene.

For its coverage of the U.S. midterm elections in November of 2010, CNN used Viz Virtual Studio and Viz Engine in conjunction with MAC’s CamTrak to put 3D virtual objects in the middle of its elaborate news set for a novel, breakthrough visual effect.

“We’re extremely pleased to establish this partnership with Motion Analysis Corporation to help market their innovative CamTrak motion tracking system to our virtual studio customers worldwide,” says Isaac Hersly, president of Vizrt Americas.  “As a result of our association with Motion Analysis Corporation, we’re able to assure our customers that CamTrak works in a seamless, complementary way with our Viz Virtual Studio and Viz Engine real-time rendering engine.”

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