Valve’s ten-day long tournament for their smash hit Dota 2 game was held in Bucharest’s largest stadium, the 50,000 capacity Arena Națională, and assembled the world’s top-ranking teams to battle it out on screen for a world record-breaking prize pool of over $40 million. The virtual part of the event was produced by virtual production company Myreze, who turned to Pixotope to help leverage the power of Unreal Engine in a live and complex broadcast environment.
The production featured a main AR stage and four analyst green screen studios (for English and Russian language) in Bucharest, one remote studio in Brazil (Portuguese), and another in Peru (Spanish). An LED screen with a virtual set was also in play for the tournament’s largest audience, China. The set also had functionality to show off the players’ chosen game characters as 3D AR elements, seemingly present in the same environment. This lineup of heroes was also mirrored on the main physical stage in Bucharest in front of the players, and was also visible to viewers watching from home.
“With esports developing into a global entertainment phenomenon, we are thrilled that Pixotope was able to support virtual production of the world’s largest esports event,” said Marcus Broderson, CEO of Pixotope. “The collaboration between Myreze and Dota 2 heralds a new era of innovative virtual experiences that truly enhance fan viewership and participation, and we look forward to seeing how they take esports broadcasting to new levels in the future.”
Underpinned by 19 live and back-up Pixotope engines and bolstered by their on-site and remote support, presenters were landed into a multi-level virtual environment that provided a seamless viewing experience between game and commentary through virtual monitors, which included Pixotope’s data visualization tools for supporting data integration. This production had to reach an expected global viewership in the hundreds of millions with graphics from Myreze transporting those viewers straight into the action.In total, 15 tracked cameras were used in the analyst sets and main stage. A proprietary data recording solution allowed the Myreze team to replay video and tracking data in real time, greatly aiding the fine-tuning of their creative delivery on the main stage.
Because Pixotope doesn’t require pre-rendering, Myreze could make immediate last-minute changes to data-driven tournament graphics, motion capture and camera tracking with ease. This unique flexibility of Pixotope enabled panelists to have featurettes constructed on the fly, with virtual segments taken from idea to on-air, within the hour.
(All information was provided by AnimationXpress)
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