When it comes to the current hot film and television drama shooting methods, we have to mention the led wall for virtual production. Virtual production led walls offer a whole new approach to filming to capture the vast visuals of a project. It’s not hard to explain why it’s becoming more and more popular with many filmmakers and production companies.
In this article, we will introduce the led wall for virtual production to you in detail from many aspects. Including its cost, principle, and structure, and how to build the best video wall for the best shooting effect.
1. What is Virtual Production LED Wall?
The Virtual Production LED Wall is a high-tech display system that utilizes LED technology to create a virtual environment for filmmaking and other media production. It can create anything from large outdoor backdrops to entire virtual sets.
Therefore, this large display unit is ideal for businesses producing high-quality content on a budget. Such as the world’s top film and television production company. It can be said that virtual shooting technology is changing the entire film and television industry.
(1) What is XR/VR/AR/MR?
VR – Virtual Reality. It utilizes devices to simulate a virtual world with a 100% immersive experience. When you wear special VR glasses, the pictures you see are all computer-generated virtual worlds.
AR – Augmented Reality. The characteristic of AR technology is that it combines real-world information with virtual-world information. It superimposes the real environment and virtual images into the same space in real-time, thus bringing a sensory experience beyond reality.
MR – Mixed Reality. MR mixes the real and the virtual world to generate a new visual environment, which contains both physical entities and virtual information, and must be “real-time”.
XR – Extended Reality. In general, XR equals a mix of the first three. XR uses computer technology and wearable devices to create a human-computer interactive environment that combines real and virtual information.
(2) What is XR LED Screen?
The combination of XR technology + led display is brilliant in the film and television production industry. XR led screen is an interactive digital display system composed of an led screen and software. It combines various technologies such as VR\MR\AR and aims to create complex visual effects cost-effectively.
Amazing XR led screen has become the mainstream of the virtual studio industry. In addition to creating XR stages, it is also popular in advertising, exhibitions, live broadcasts, and other industries.
(3) Mandalorian LED Wall
The introduction of Led virtual shooting into the public’s sight is inseparable from the film and television works represented by “The Mandalorian”.
The Mandalorian video wall is also named The Volume/StageCraft. The Mandalorian led wall is a virtual production led wall built by ILM for the movie “The Mandalorian”.
This unprecedented approach to film production opens the door to virtual production. Since then, some top production companies have begun to build their virtual shooting studios.
In the future, the combination of LED screens and virtual shooting technology will be applied to more content creation, such as variety shows, advertisements, MV, multimedia, webcast, exhibition, and other fields.
2. How Does it Work?
To explain the principles of virtual production, a lot of technical terms are involved. From the schematic diagram below, we can know the three most crucial parts: the led display screen, XR controller, and camera tracking system.
First of all, Led display for virtual production is the soul of this technology. It takes on the task of providing context. Usually, the led wall consists of multiple parts. Typical example:
A corner composed of 3 led displays: 2 right-angled walls + 1 floor tile screen
Second, the real-time engine in the XR control system provides the correct image content for all led display walls. These real-time rendering effects will be presented on the LED display, reducing the post-production cost.
Finally, a camera with a tracking device moves around the led screen, sending data to the rendering engine. The real-time content of the game engine will be presented on the led video wall.
With this shooting method, actors can interact with virtual content, and the director can directly experience the real-time picture of the scene.
On the one hand, the editor can adjust the screen content in time during the shooting process, which greatly reduces the time and cost of post-production. On the other hand, with the blessing of high technology, a led wall for virtual production can create more magical scenes.
3. How Much Does a Virtual Production LED Wall Cost?
There is no doubt that virtual production led wall cost is expensive. But it is worth noting that the led wall for virtual production includes the led display and advanced production technology.
That’s why the Mandalorian led wall cost over $10 billion.
The virtual production led wall price is also higher than the normal led display. Main reasons:
(1)Smaller pixel pitch for a better shooting effect
(2)Virtually produced LED displays have more stringent requirements for accurate color reproduction, dynamic high refresh, dynamic high brightness, dynamic high contrast, wide viewing angle without color shift, etc.
(3)Better led display control system
However, the high cost cannot deny that investing in led wall virtual production can bring rich benefits. As you can use it multiple times and rent it to other production teams.
We believe that with the advancement of led technology, there will be more small teams who can afford the virtual production led wall price.
4. Advantages of Virtual Scene Shooting
In virtual shooting, the immersive background created by the LED display replaces the green screen in the traditional virtual studio. Its advantages include but are not limited to the following:
(1) led wall virtual production can front-end some post-production tasks. The director can see the final film effect during the shooting process. It saves post-production costs through real-time tracking and adjustment.
(2) The director and photographer can adjust the background content and visual effects during the shooting process, thereby reducing the probability of reshoots in the later stage.
(3) LED virtual filming can avoid the problem of green screen overflow. When props are made of transparent materials, the transmitted colors and light effects are more natural and realistic.
(4) Led virtual studio creates massive visual effects in real-time. Complex spatial scenes can be created in real-time with the help of a professional game engine.
LED walls for virtual production can solve the presentation of dangerous scenes in real shooting, such as war and explosions.
Want to capture the perfect sunset or sunrise picture? No need to think about the weather! Use the XR led screen to match the lighting effect to get a perfect picture!
(5) A good immersive environment allows actors to quickly enter the role, reducing the number of NGs, thereby improving shooting efficiency.
(6) The LED display itself can emit light. The right lighting can enhance the realism of the picture. Compared with traditional green screens, it can save a lot of complicated lighting.
High-end LED wall for virtual production has solved many pain points of the traditional shooting industry. It creates more realistic environments, saving time and money. Led display + virtual shooting technology is replacing the traditional green screen.
5. Scenarios of Unreal Engine LED Wall
Now, we have a relatively comprehensive understanding of this technology. In addition to film and television production, in which scenes can you use the virtual led wall to obtain greater profits?
(1) LED Wall Film Production
The virtual production led wall can solve many pain points in the traditional shooting process. At present, many production companies have cooperated with LED display manufacturers to build their own XR virtual studios.
(2) LED Virtual Studio
High-definition led display is an important carrier of modern studios. In addition to film and television production, led virtual studio has an excellent performance in live broadcasts and variety shows.
The immersive XR studio with three LED screens as the background can achieve precise interaction and strong expressiveness.
(3) XR stage & Exhibition
XR technology realizes the interaction and combination of characters and virtual scenes. The virtual led wall is more and more used in stages and exhibitions. The high-quality LED curtain wall, combined with 3D rendering technology, brings the audience a stunning visual feast.
(4) Immersive Application Scenarios
Currently, there are three popular experience types on the market: immersive entertainment, immersive art exhibitions, and immersive performances. Designers use high-definition led displays to bring people a shocking visual experience.
The immersive LED display has higher brightness, does not limit the brightness of the scene, and can avoid the shadow of characters, which is the best choice for an immersive experience.
(5) Online Activities
With the fiery blessing of the first year of the Metaverse, led virtual production has more and newer opening methods. It can be seen in various online activities such as live streaming, new product launches, and car commentary.
6. LED Wall for Virtual Production VS. Green Screen
The main differences between green screen and led virtual shooting are as follows:
(1) Production Process
Traditional green screen shooting:
- Place physical backgrounds and build green screen backgrounds
- Capture video content
- Perform video post-processing, including background content, modeling
- Complete production
LED virtual production:
- Build LED display studio
- Shoot video content, XR real-time synchronous rendering
- Complete production
(2) Setup Preparation
Although it will take a certain amount of time and effort to create an LED display in the early stage, the background can be changed at any time during the later shooting process.
Using a green screen set takes more time because of the lighting and other background arrangements that need to be considered. If you need to change the shooting scene, you need to rebuild.
(3) The Difficulty of Post-production
The shooting method using the led display screen as the background has the characteristics of real-time. XR shooting can save the cost of post-production.
For green screen shoots, post-production often involves more effort than actually shooting.
(4) Total Cost
The cost of building a green screen stage is low.
Due to the high cost of led panels, software, etc., the cost of building a virtual studio is higher than that of a green screen. However, virtual production can effectively reduce crew transportation costs and environmental waiting costs for location shooting.
7. How to Choose the Best Virtual Production LED Wall?
If you are planning to build a led video wall for virtual production, or plan to set up a virtual production studio, then you should be careful. After all, this budget is not a small amount.
So what LED display parameters should we pay attention to when purchasing XR led wall? How to choose the best virtual production led wall?
(1) Brightness
At present, the brightness of most led walls for virtual production is between 1000-1500 nits.
If it is lower than 1000 nits, it will not be able to effectively display the self-luminous characteristics of the led display screen. It may also affect the shooting effect.
(2) Scan Rate
The number of scans is the ratio between the number of lines that the LED screen drive current scans and lights up in the unit, and the total number of lines of the screen module.
The smaller the denominator of the scan number, the better the screen performance, and the lower the probability of black lines and horizontal stripes appearing during shooting.
(3) Refresh rate
The higher the refresh rate, the better the picture effect presented by the camera. Generally speaking, the 3840Hz display can meet most shooting needs.
(4) Pixel pitch
As we all know, the smaller the pixel pitch, the better the human visual perception. Correspondingly, led wall virtual production cost also increases accordingly.
The pitch of LED panels dedicated to virtual production is generally below P2.6mm. If it is higher than this value, the sharpness and graininess of the captured picture will appear.
(5) Viewing angle
At present, the horizontal and vertical angles of led displays are 140°. The viewing angle of the Led wall for virtual production is preferably above 160 degrees.
The viewing angle is large, and the freedom of camera movement is higher.
(6) Color gamut
The high-end led virtual studio has very strict requirements for the color reproduction of the led display. The rich color display guarantees excellent visual effects.
The LED screen should meet the color requirements covering the Rec.2020 color gamut as much as possible. Exceptional color depth and grayscale for unrivaled visuals.
(7) grayscale
To obtain a good display effect, the virtual production led screen must have better low grayscale performance.
MBI5264, MBI5265, MBI5262, and other special driver ICs for virtual production application displays can achieve 16bit grayscale.
(8) Special production process
Try to choose a led display with a reflective treatment. It is aimed to avoid reflected light from the led screen when shooting.
In addition, moiré has always been a problem for photographers. Selecting some led display panels with a special manufacturing process can significantly reduce the moiré phenomenon.
(9) LED panel structure
The LED display needs to be installed and disassembled quickly. At the same time, it can realize the construction of a large-area curved led video wall. It is best to meet a variety of installation methods.
The sturdy structure, lightweight led panel, and user-friendly design are plus points.
At the same time, to avoid a black screen during shooting, the led wall for virtual production needs to be equipped with a reliable power supply and a good cooling system.
(10) LED control system
Through the control system, adjust the output phase offset value to match the frame-changing pace of the LED screen and the camera. This can solve the problem of black lines and screen tearing during shooting.
It fulfills the following needs:
- HDR
- slow & fast motion
- Multi-camera shooting
- Insert green shoot
- Advanced real-time color grading for LEDs
To sum up, the following parameters should be paid attention to when purchasing LED displays:
LED display parameters | Minimum standard | Ideal standard |
Brightness | 1000nits | 1800nits |
Scan rate | 16-scan | 8-scan |
Refresh rate | 3480Hz | 7680Hz |
Pixel pitch | P2.6 | P1.8 |
Grayscale | 12bit | 22bit |
Color gamut | Rec.709 | Rec.2020 |
Viewing angle | 140° | 170° |
8. UNIT LED XR Cinematography Solution
XR stage series HD rental led Display
- High definition: the pixel pitch is P2.604, making the screen a small pixel rental LED display.
- High refresh rate: high refresh rate up to 7680Hz, enabling stable visual performance without flickering when filming.
- Wide grayscale: 16 bit grayscale, more delicate image quality.
- Support almost all types of contents: 4K HD videos allowed.
- Auto-locking system for fast and easy 1 man installation
- Support front & rear maintenance
Floor led display
- Quick and flexible installation: direct installation without tools or rail mounting.
- High load-bearing performance: aluminum alloy material structure, bearing capacity of 1.5 tons / m2 or more.
- Excellent maintenance performance: can be directly exchanged without removing the adjacent cabinet
- High contrast design: technical design mask, clear play effect
- Excellent low-light and high-gray effect, showing uniform gray scale and good consistency
- Widely used in studio, virtual led studio, XR stage field to enhance the sense of creativity
VMP+MX40 Pro+A10s Pro
Supports frame multiplexing allowing users to reframe multiple video feeds in the same time field.
Utilizing the camera’s genlock phase offset, it becomes possible to output multiple effects simultaneously within a single shooting scene, improving work efficiency and reducing cost.
The new MX series control system creates an immersive shooting scene and provide full guarantee for XR scene shooting.
Conclusion
led wall film production is a new scene for led display applications. There is no doubt that this technologically-inspired shooting method has led to a revolution in film and television shooting.
In fact, XR virtual prodution has been regarded as the track of metaverse infrastructure.
In this post, we have introduced to you the relevant content of led wall for virtual production in detail, including the principle, cost, and solution. UNIT LED provides high quality virtual production led display wall with best price, contact us to get your competitive solution.
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