Virtual Production: Getting the Lighting Right

Today's virtual production stages surround actors with the light of millions of LEDs, creating real-world image-based lighting as well as in-camera backgrounds.  But is the lighting in a virtual production stage accurate?  That is, do actors in a virtual production stage really appear the same way they would if actually standing in the intended environments?  This was the topic of a recent study by the virtual production working group from the USC Entertainment Technology Center.  A set of actors, reference spheres, and a color chart were photographed in several interior and exterior environments, and the lighting was recorded using state-of-the-art HDRI capture techniques.  Then, each of these environments was reproduced in a virtual production LED light stage volume, and the actors and lighting references were photographed again.  We found that out of the box, there were significant lighting mismatches, owing to issues with angular coverage of the LED panels, the dynamic range of the reproduced lighting, and the poor color rendition of the peaky color spectrum of the LED panels.  But for each of these limitations, we found ways to mitigate their impact and achieve good lighting matches nonetheless.  Our findings help point the way for improved virtual production stages which are better equipped, out of the box, to get the lighting right.