The American Society of Cinematographers and the Academy Software Foundation has announced the public release of Standard Evaluation Material 3 for Virtual Production: StEM3-VP.
The digital assets are now available for download as part of the ASWF’s Digital Production Example Library, which “provides the community with free access to production-grade content that reflects the scale and complexity of modern feature film production”.
StEM3-VP was designed specifically for in-camera visual effects workflows, and enables cinematographers to evaluate and validate an LED volume prior to filming.
This initiative aims to provide the motion picture industry with assets to stress-test and evaluate technology prior to production.
StEM3-VP marks the third iteration in the ASC’s Standard Evaluation Material initiative, spearheaded by the ASC’s Motion Imaging Technology Council.
“A lot of us cinematographers have been on sets where virtual production screens were in use and they were not properly calibrated; colour rendition was off, dynamic range was sketchy, so we figured it was important to be able to have evaluation material that would standardise how this is supposed to look and this is the starting point of where this needs to go,” said Michael Goi ASC ISC, co-chair of the ASC MITC.
“For the StEM 3 asset suite, we were looking for as diverse a range of environments as possible, interiors, exteriors, day, night, different weather conditions – things that would normally be used in any kind of production.”
The StEM3-VP suite of assets includes multiple pre-built Unreal Engine environments donated by top virtual production studios around the world, along with 2D driving plates and 2D test elements that a cinematographer may use to test and evaluate a stage prior to production.
The StEM3-VP assets can be used to visually check the performance and integrity of the LED panels and system functions.
Among the assets is a short scene shot by David Klein ASC, written by Goi and ASC associate member Jay Holben, and directed by Holben.
The “Warped: CyberCity” scene provides high quality reference footage, shot in a real-world virtual production volume setting with a professional crew.
An accompanying behind-the-scenes video also describes the production process.
“The objective of the Motion Imaging Technology Council of the American Society of Cinematographers is to understand the technological sea change impacting our media industries while emphasising the cinematographer’s contribution in the advancement of the art form,” said David Morin, executive director of the ASWF and associate member of the ASC.
“StEM3 provides an asset package that can be used to evaluate virtual production stages from the visual point of view of cinematographers.
“We are delighted to host StEM3 at the Academy Software Foundation in the Digital Production Example Library.”
StEM3-VP joins a range of other DPEL assets in the library including Netflix Animation Studios’ ALab and Sole Mates production scenes, Adobe’s OpenPBR Shader Playground asset, Amazon Web Services’ Airship asset, Intel’s Volumetric Cloud Library, and the ASC’s previous StEM2 project.
Find out more on the ASC website.
