AMD's ARwall Tools Help Filmmakers Get Rid of the Green Screen

DooKey

DooKey

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AMD has come up with a new technology they call the ARwall and it helps filmmakers lose the need for the green screen. The technology features a large wall in the background that displays what would normally be added later after the film is shot with a green screen. It's an impressive technology and I'm sure this is going to make its way to Hollywood in no time. Check out the video. Thanks SpeedyVV.

Watch the video here.
 
This won't replace green-screen. It's flat (green-screen can be three-dimensional, matching the virtual landscape), it can't handle multi-camera shoots, it can't incorporate items into the foreground or onto the actors, it can't do reflections off shiny items on the actors properly (different POV) and it almost certainly limited resolution, color gamut and dynamic range.

Plus, there's no need for it: green screen works fine.
 
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Costs more to produce without a green screen and hardly anyone is doing it anymore but when it is done and done right no CGI can ever touch it. AMD may need to think of other practical uses of this instead of replacing Green Screen but I applaud them on innovation and hope they continue to press the envelope with more integration and ideas.
 
Looks eerily similar to rear-screen projection - with the same lighting mismatch. Bad demo or bad tech issue? Could be useful for fake weather reports or cheezy corporate promo vids.
 
Yeah... That doesn't seem to make me do any "oooo, ahhhh's". Quit making Green Screen replacements and make faster, cheaper video cards.
 
pcgeekesq said:
This won't replace green-screen. It's flat (green-screen can be three-dimensional, matching the virtual landscape), it can't handle multi-camera shoots, it can't incorporate items into the foreground or onto the actors, it can't do reflections off shiny items on the actors properly (different POV) and it almost certainly limited resolution, color gamut and dynamic range.

Plus, there's no need for it: green screen works fine.
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Well the flat and perspective and single camera really aren't limitations. The perspective changes with camera. And there are always reshoots (which is why there are continuity errors in many movies) (ie: She's wearing a new jacket in one scene, then torn up the next scene, then new again in the next scene)

However I agree with you. I don't think there is much of a market in professional film for this. The lighting and reflection model is off. You can see it in the final composted video. Looks like old cheesy blue screen where they didn't take lighting and shadows into account. Small production houses maybe.
 
Rahh said:
Costs more to produce without a green screen and hardly anyone is doing it anymore but when it is done and done right no CGI can ever touch it. AMD may need to think of other practical uses of this instead of replacing Green Screen but I applaud them on innovation and hope they continue to press the envelope with more integration and ideas.
Click to expand...

Green screen still has a ton of limitations including shadows, scaling, limited shot angle, and lighting/shadows not be proper between the scene and the actor. Takes a skilled filmmaker to make it work perfectly.
 
If they could then later replace the background in post, say, using the reference background plus a little bit of ML magic, and make this process about as painless as a single click, then this would be an obvious step forward in film making.

Giving actors and crew a better idea of how things will look at the end of the process and removing green bounce lighting are huge and obvious advantages. But making it super hard to key out the background is going to be too big of a disadvantage, at least for big budget productions. There's probably a niche somewhere between big budget and homemade projects that this technology fills, assuming the cost isn't too high, but the current implementation seems pretty limited.
 
clockdogg said:
Looks eerily similar to rear-screen projection - with the same lighting mismatch. Bad demo or bad tech issue? Could be useful for fake weather reports or cheezy corporate promo vids.
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Yeah I was about to chime in that giant rear projection "screens" to fill in background shots have been around since.... forever. Before blue/green screen was everywhere. It's not a replacement really, but a lot cheaper to throw up an image that's going to be out of lens focus anyway if the desire is just to fill a void.

Fun fact - a lot of the ED-209 scenes from the original Robocop were done this way, saw that in the "making of" vid.
 
IcePickFreak said:
Coll tech I guess, but they did a terrible job at showing it off IMO.
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Yeah, they should have shown us the POV camera, not the guy standing behind him. Could have overlayed the guy behind him in a PIP window or something.

My guess, it'll be good for low-budget or quick turn around shows (like SNL skits / late night / etc).
 
If this can be removed as easily in post and replaced with finished renders. I can see this being used in small amounts on very expensive movies already. It solves some issues with lighting ect... if they can justify costs by reducing post production time fixing lighting ect perhaps its a wash for large productions. As others have pointed out can't see this replacing Green screen the majority of the time due to geometry issues ect... great start though.
 
its just IR tracking on a bigger screen.

not a good idea to physically tie in filming location with hardware required to render though.

i guess it will be used for simple 1-on-1 user head tracked advertisement. ?
 
ChadD said:
If this can be removed as easily in post and replaced with finished renders. I can see this being used in small amounts on very expensive movies already. It solves some issues with lighting ect... if they can justify costs by reducing post production time fixing lighting ect perhaps its a wash for large productions. As others have pointed out can't see this replacing Green screen the majority of the time due to geometry issues ect... great start though.
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This I think also that it's just used to simulate lighting, not replace the green screen for rendered effects.
 
Chaos Machine said:
This I think also that it's just used to simulate lighting, not replace the green screen for rendered effects.
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Exactly I know AMD really wants to show off their rendering power here. All they really have to do though is simulate blocks of colour in the right spots and devise a way to track the exact locations of the exact colour every frame so they can be painted over after the fact. Make it as easy to remove in post... but on a much more accurate per pixel basis. The VFX people would no longer have to fix lighting on actors making the whole thing look a lot more real. One of the main issues with green screen is the "green spil" they talk about, artists fix that and it adds to the unreal cartoon feel of CGI... imo the difference between good CGI and Terrible CGI is often how good those artists are that are doing the re-colouring.

If AMD was just shooting general blocks of the correct lighting based on simplified digital set pieces they could power the whole project with one Radeon Pro via thunderbolt and a laptop.

What AMD should do is slim this down, make sure they have nailed the pixel tracking and then partner with a company like RED or something. I imagine it would be surprising how fast they could find this tech used in a big way.
 
Hmm.. $200 for a green screen.. $50,000 for an array of lcd screens. I wonder which tech will win?
 
I think the ar wall is to give actors more inmmersion, im under the impression that the virtual background is the virtual background same as greenscreen.. i am not sure the camera is actually filming the physical wall as if a dumb camera filming.
 
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