Eric Pr ydz’s Creative Director, Co-Designer and VJ Liam Tomaszewski,
commented: “The holographic aspect to the sphere is about us creating
visuals in three dimensions. This is unique. I don’t know anybody who has
created three-dimensional visuals and displayed them in three dimensions,
using what we call the ‘double equirectangular projection’ – a spherical
map that wraps images onto the cur ved surface.
“The Holosphere visuals were rendered by six separate virtual cameras
and stitched together to create content that would be correct from all
viewing angles. Figuring out the process to get to an end result that we
were happy with took a really long time. When a sphere is your medium,
it’s a whole new challenge. You can’t just render regular aspect ratio video
and wrap it around. You have to work from the ground up with the sphere
in mind, so figuring out unique looks and forming them into an overarching
narrative was an enormous challenge.”
Dave Green, Technical and Software Director on the EPIC project and
Co-Owner of RES, has been developing the software used to drive the video
elements of the show for more than 10 years: Avolites Ai software. Now
commercially available in the UK, RES is one of Avolites’ Global Centres of
Excellence for Ai integration. The hardware used was two Avolites R4 media
ser vers – one main show machine and one backup.
The system outputted three video feeds at up to 2,160 at 50p and
playing back media at custom resolutions in the order of 4k also running at
50p. “The major challenge on the EPIC shows is always the same: keeping
the media playing smoothly, while driving one of the most complex stage
sets in the industr y,” said Green. “We achieve this by using the fantastic^AiM codec developed by Avolites, myself and Trey Harrison of Harrison
Digital Media in California. The codec facilitates impeccable video quality
along with class-leading performance. The Ai software also has some
incredible video-mapping capabilities, which allowed us to drive the
near-perfect spherical output map produced in collaboration with Br yn
Williams at Light Initiative.”
Eric Pr ydz commented on the design of this latest performance: “I’m
excited to see our nearly impossible idea come to life and I hope the people
watching are as wowed by the sphere as I am. It’s fun to see how far you
can push it, how extreme you can make things, and how you can come up
with ideas that people haven’t seen or experienced before. Then, the joy of
seeing people going absolutely crazy over it is an amazing feeling.”
Calvert concludes: “The EPIC shows get more and more ambitious
ever y time. It’s as exciting as it is satisfying to see the hard work of so many
talented people come together for a truly awesome experience. I would like
to personally thank ever yone involved in both our internal project team,
Light Initiative team and Tomorrowland’s team for their dedication and
passion to realising EPIC 6.0 – especially Br yn Williams for believing in our
original vision and sharing the journey with us to realisation and successful
deliver y of the project.”
TPi
Photos: Antonio Pagano and RES
http://www.resgb.com
http://www.lightinitiative.co.uk
http://www.ericprydz.comERIC PRYDZ
Liam Tomaszewski (Punkette), Ross Chapple (RCLD), Mark Calvert (RES), Simon Cox, Dave Green (RES) and Bryn Williams (Light Initiative).