Ken's Trip to Pinewood's Shepperton Studios.
On the 27th Feb 2019 our CGI course leader Ken had the fantastic opportunity to go and visit Pinewood Studios Based in Shepperton home to the world's best-loved Films/TV shows and a lot of sheep ha ha🙂
The Shepperton studio is close to Heathrow airport and only 18 miles from London so it is an easy destination to get too. The location of the studio’s is outstanding they are built around a magnificent manor house, it has 14 stages, 10 acres of back-lot land and thousands of square feet of workshop space in which this attracts some of the most inspirational content creators we have today. There are also facilities for production support services and a media hub/access to some outstanding talent. Â
Ken had a digital replica of himself created whilst he visited the studios which are used for CG shots in films. Even then he couldn’t put his cup of tea down so that got captured in the replica too! Ken was lucky enough to experience head scanning and full body photogrammetry.Â
In order to create these replica’s a scanning method called ‘photogrammetry’ which is done by Clear Angle Studios at Shepperton. Photogrammetry works by using a series of cameras on a rig paired with extremely bright lights, the lights are used to get every small detail as possible – even a few wrinkles! This is done in order to take a still image and then similar coloured pixels are used to create a point in 3D space until the digital replica is made.Â
Ken couldn’t miss this fantastic opportunity due to Clear Angle Studios catering for a large range of industries however they predominantly work with very high end, ultra-realistic scan and varying texture data for the VFX and gaming industries.Â
There is also another main scanning method used to create digital replica’s which is called ‘LIDAR’ this stands for ‘Light detection and ranging’. It’s a remote sensing method that uses laser to measure elevation like forests, ground and buildings in order to create 3D maps which can then be used in TV and Film.
LIDAR is usually created from using planes, helicopters and drones and uses an infrared laser source to sense objects; it sends a pulse of light and waits for it to return to the sensor in order to get a variable distance of the objects.Â
Ken had a great day and would highly recommend anyone in this industry visiting the studio's to experience the amazing technology that they have to offer.
Thanks for reading from us,
CGI team :)
Website of Shepperton studios who gave Ken the fantastic opportunity to have a digital replica of himself: https://www.pinewoodgroup.com/on-the-lot/clear-angle-studios & https://www.clearanglestudios.co.uk/services/Â
