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Meet the inventor behind Disney's new HoloTile floor

Meet the inventor behind Disney's new HoloTile floor

🌐 Lightcraft's Jetset Pro, BURANO Tutorials

January 23, 2024

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Welcome to VP Land 🌐

Congrats to the Oscar nominees that were just announced this morning.

In today’s issue:

The inspiring inventor behind Disney’s new HoloTile floor
The new app that helps previz your virtual production shoots
Side-by-side comparison of Mo-Sys’ StarTracker and StarTracker MAX

Alright, let’s jump into it!

STAGE A

The Inventor Behind Disney’s New HoloTile Floor

Walt Disney Imagineering dropped a video that’s been blowing up all over social media: the HoloTile floor. But behind the impressive demo is an even more impressive inventor: Lanny Smoot.

Let’s dig into the tech behind the floor and Lanny’s inspiring story of innovation.

Source: Disney

The HoloTile Floor

Billed as “the first multi-person, omnidirectional…treadmill floor,” the HoloTile floor tracks your location as you walk and does whatever it needs to keep you from walking off the tile.
Multiple people can walk independently on the floor in any direction and be tracked and kept on the floor.
Immediate use cases are gaming and VR (and obviously expanding filming movement in a volume). Other potential uses mentioned were for stage performances, like dancers, or illusions, with people or objects floating around the floor.

Source: Disney

Lanny’s Story

Lanny started his career at Bell Labs, where he worked on early video-on-demand and video conferencing technology.
He joined Walt Disney Imagineering about 25 years ago. To date he has 106 patents. He is a Disney Research Fellow, which is the highest level of technical achievement.
This year he is going to be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He is only the second person from Disney to be inducted - the first being Walt Disney himself, who was posthumously inducted for the invention of the multiplane camera.

Source: Disney

Lanny’s Other Disney Inventions

Getting Madame Leota’s disembodied head to float inside the Haunted Mansion
Fully extendable lightsabers used by cast at various Star Wars experiences
Tech from interactive exhibits at Innoventions in EPCOT (RIP Innoventions)
Inventions that haven’t found a use yet, including new ride systems and “3D displays where you don’t need to wear 3D glasses”

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SECOND UNIT

VP Previz with Lightcraft’s Jetset Pro

Joshua Kerr broke down Lightcraft’s Jetset Pro as a previz tool for an upcoming VP shoot in a recent YouTube video.

Kerr loaded his Unreal Engine scene into Jetset Pro on his iPhone using Autoshot to convert the scene from USD to USDZ
Using the iPhone’s sensors, it detects the floor and loads the 3D scene so you can move around the environment, change focal lengths, and record shots.
It uses depth-mapped based rotoscoping and AI to identify and key people and hands. It also has a built-in keyer to set a chroma key color and get a smoother key edge if you have a green/blue backdrop.
Unique to Jetset Pro is Scene Locators - adding actors in the virtual scene as markers you can jump around to on the app for fast navigation.
There’s also a ghost slider to adjust fading between real and virtual world. This wasn’t demoed in the video but Lightcraft showed VP Land in a demo - you can pin virtual objects to real-world objects to better match real and virtual orientations.

Kerr’s demo was with the Jetset Pro as a previz tool. We’ve been seeing similar tools for iPhones and iPads, like Fuzzy Door Tech’s ViewScreen tools.

But what wasn’t showcased is Lightcraft’s other app: the Jetset Cine. This new app can use the iPhone as a tracker on top of a separate cine camera, using Accsoon’s adapters to connect the two and calibrate the lens.

We’re keeping an eye out for real-world demos of this setup.

Jetset Pro is $20 / month or $200 / year. Jetset Cine is $80 / month or $800 / year.

CASTING CALL

VP Gigs

🆕 Senior Concept Artist
ILM London

Producer / Project Manager
Cuebric

Unreal FX Artists
WildBrain Studios

VIDEO VILLAGE

CoPilot has a great video comparing the Mo-Sys StarTracker MAX to the original StarTracker

AKS

🌐 Around the Web

🔊 ElevenLabs unveils new voice AI products and secures $80M funding for R&D

🗣️ Respeecher is the first audio company to join Adobe's Content Authenticity Initiative to safeguard against misuse and deepfakes.

⚔️ Nick Catliff shared a trailer for his work on Netflix’s upcoming 'Alexander: The Making of a God' and James Hakesley posted about Apple’s upcoming Masters of Air, which used VP extensively for cockpit scenes.

🗓 Schedule posts and track your social media with Metricool*

🔲 SmallHD releases new Ultra 7 monitor that features 2300 nits brightness

🎥 Sony releases first 2 tutorials for the powerful Sony BURANO cinema camera with 8K sensor

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