What the Tech!
Welcome to What the Tech!, a space where every week our Creative Technologist James Pollock shares updates that have piqued his interest in the world of tech.
Gaussian Splatting
Gaussian Splatting has really shaken up the volumetric capture and rendering scene over the past year or so. This technology allows for intricate, detailed volumetric captures that also maintain qualities such as reflections and other view-dependent effects. They can also be quite lightweight, making them a great option for realtime applications in web and XR.
There’s so much great work happening in this space right now, so I thought I’d share some examples:
GaussianAvatars
This research from Technical University of Munich and Toyota shows morphable, animatable gaussian head scans being driven by a video of another head or manipulated through parameters.
GaussianAvatars: Photorealistic Head Avatars with Rigged 3D Gaussians
Infinite-Realities
This Ipswich-based volumetric capture studio has done some excellent work showcasing the potential of high quality motion scans.
Spatial Memories
Postshot
If you want to get started with gaussian splatting, Postshot’s a great toolkit for creating both NeRFs and gaussian splats. You provide a collection of photos or a video of a scene you want to turn into a 3D model, and Potshot trains a model on the input, giving you a live preview as it reconstructs the scene. What’s great about Postshot is you can use the software to bring your 3D captures into After Effects projects.
Postshot Beta Release v0.3
Tools for Realtime Previz
It all begins with an idea.
VCam for Unreal Engine
This is a great tool by Epic that lets you use your phone as a virtual camera. You can create your camera moves physically, while seeing the scene on your phone screen.
Velox
A really interesting approach to bringing live action footage into Unreal. Capable of extracting and placing people or objects from footage, this could be a really quick and easy way to previsualise a virtual production shot before heading to a volume.
Simulon
Simulon uses AR to place 3D assets into the real world, where you can then film the results. Uses lighting info to better embed the augmented content. Could be useful for location scouting.
