What I know from my early exposure of the technology, this may not be 100% accurate at this time. If you have any questions I can pass them on to the developers and generate an FAQ for anyone who is interested.

It uses 6 cameras, to stereoscopic images at 48 frames per second, 4 cameras capture images for geometry, and 2 cameras capture textures. At the moment the system is not running at full speed but they hop in the coming year to get the conversion to 3D mesh in real time. At the moment the system generates a 3D mesh and texture for each frame, at the moment the technology is in early development so the post capture software is still very limited.

The Aim is to develop the technology to be able to capture a person’s face and all the subtle movements in real-time and generates an animated 3D model and textures. Rather than limiting the amount of data received by using markers attached to the face, this uses infrared imaged to generate the depth map needed to build the meshes. So the person being captured can wear the character makeup and have that captured as the textures.
Once you have an animated model then you can do any number of things with it, one of the hope is to be able to take it and morph/transform it so that the face can be changed but the subtle movements of skin and muscle are kept intact. The technology is a few years of being able to do this like this but the possibilities are there.

The aim is to develop the technology for the games and film industry, this would eliminate the needs for armies of animators having to animate individual elements of characters faces. Instead they could focus on other aspects of characterisation. Once the technology is up and running at full speed and quality it could offer a wide range of possibilities, games where characters both in the foreground and background are individuals rather than using cloned elements. Films where the stuntman’s or body doubles faces are replaced by the actors to create an even more convincing performance in the absence of the main actor. Above all it will cut down post production time for such elements considerably thus reducing the overall cost of production.

We will be using an early development rig in our film for the generation of holographic characters, this will give use the ability to distort the face without losing the subtle elements of the actors performance. Though we will not be using the real-time rig the end result is the same, it creates a much more organic model and something far less ridged and lifeless as current technology.

Here is a link to one of our video diaries where we were testing the system in an early development stage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJHlM0Iixqc

Casimir Effect is still talking up most of my life, as early casting has started and hopefully we will have contracts signed and big announcements soon. Read-through’s will take place the second week of September, to iron out the last bits of the script.

I am so, so happy with the work on the theme song so far by the lovely Nina Barnfather! Been humming the song for several weeks now, can’t wait to get the final recording done. We have another band doing a song for us, but not much can be said about that yet! But I am very happy with how things are moving along.

Render tests and art department stuff is looking good, colour palettes and a few props are being worked on. I think the footage from the 4D camera we will be using is more convincing than the AVATAR preview, plus no one has to wear silly glasses!

We have several options for multi award winning Cinematographers and a sound studio with engineers for the final mix arranged.

For the next few weeks I will be organising and writing for what I am provisionally calling ‘Iolanthus Online’, which will be a multiplatform interactive blog/social networking ARG (Artificial Reality Game). We are currently recruiting actors/writers; the story will be the lead up to Casimir Effect.

Full on pre-production is now on the event horizon and down the wormhole we go!

Frank one of our science advisors had just got back to us has put us in touch with an expert in Quantum Physics from Cambridge. So we can start looking at the physical possibilities of time travel and at least get the technical angle of this film as close as we can.

The 4D Camera guys like the idea of working with us and are looking in to the practicalities of using the camera for some of the sequences in our film.

Things are moving forward at a good pace, there is a lot of juggling at the moment and plenty of opportunities. We may be using a 4D Camera system, 3D Monitors and other such cool stuff to make this film come true. We have some interest from Gareth David-Lloyd (Torchwood), to play the male lead in the film, were still chasing a female lead.

I spent yesterday speaking to one of our Science advisors; mostly it was to make sure the technology we show in the film is plausible, even if there are some narrative freedoms being applied. We know what were putting in isn’t going into the realms of impossible.

Today has been mostly looking up rendering engines, at the moment for the free engines LuxRender is the best we have, it has the best rendering of light and that to me is one of the most important parts of doing any CGI is the accuracy of light. I’m also tasked to write a love letter to the Renderman Crew at Pixar, to try and blag the use of their render engine for the film as our budget is currently £0. I have also started to compile our crew list, while Lydia is writing a prose short story that we will use to develop the script from.