#Cine tracer demo full
“I had no idea how massive the LED project would be and I spent a full month on the stage. “I was already going to be presenting twice with Unreal Engine at SIGGRAPH, so I was up for one more project,” says Workman. Specifically, he was part of an LED wall shoot as ‘director/DP’ during SIGGRAPH 2019. When Epic Games became involved in helping productions with real-time footage delivery on LED walls (the kind popularized by The Mandalorian), they asked Workman to help demo the tech on a purpose-built stage featuring Lux Machina LED screens. He was awarded an Unreal Dev Grant and has been part of the Unreal Engine 4 Live Training stream. Having worked with Epic since the beginning of Cine Tracer, Workman has maintained that relationship. Since then I’ve kept adding to what is now called Cine Tracer as I learn Unreal Engine, and it’s turned into its own ecosystem and includes set building and digital humans on top of the cameras and lights from my Maya/Cinema 4D work.” I posted the video online and it went viral. “So I started to learn Unreal Engine 4 and I made a quick prototype into a video game. “One day Epic Games asked me if I would develop something similar for Unreal,” relates Workman. It caught the eye of Unreal Engine maker Epic Games. The plug-in allowed for very accurate technical previs with rigged 3D models of cameras, lights and other film industry equipment.
#Cine tracer demo simulator
That early tool segued into the development of a real-time cinematography simulator called Cine Tracer, after Workman had started a company called Cinematography Database and begun selling a Cinema 4D previs plug-in known as Cine Designer. I started by building tools in Maya, and I actually had a product for a short time called ‘Virtual Cinematography Tools’ that some people still use that was a mix of rigged models and a simple Python/MEL plug-in.” “Many of these projects had storyboards and previs already done, so I wanted to be able to contribute and share my ideas for camera work and lighting. “When I was working as a live-action cinematographer, the bigger projects required weeks of pre-production and planning for a one-to-three-day shoot,” Workman remarks. This also sparked an interest in doing his own previs. Workman worked as a commercial cinematographer in New York for more than a decade, eventually looking to transition more into larger visual effects projects. He regularly shares – often daily – his own experiments in virtual production with followers on social media, also turning to the burgeoning virtual production community for advice and inspiration. But one person, cinematographer Matt Workman ( ), has become somewhat of a go-to source. Since virtual production is a relatively new area of VFX, information, training and advice on the latest techniques have not always been easy to find for those eager to learn. There’s no doubt that virtual production, and the associated area of real-time, is the hot topic in filmmaking and visual effects right now.