Assimilate and Notch have teamed up to provide a streamlined solution for green-screen and LED-wall based virtual production (VP) workflows. Assimilate’s virtual production compositor, Live FX Studio, as well as Live FX and the Scratch finishing suite, now support Notch Block 3D environments.
Assimilate also added native support for encoding and decoding Notch’s high-performance GPU-accelerated video codec NotchLC, providing the first color and metadata-accurate quality control (QC), mastering, and transcoding solution for NotchLC.
This combined Virtual Production solution revolutionizes how 3D scenes can be merged with live camera imagery. Notch Builder allows creatives to build the entire 3D environment with incredible speed and quality. The 3D scenes can then be exported as an industry standard Notch Block, and loaded into Assimilate Live FX for live compositing in green-screen environments, or for projecting onto LED walls on virtual production stages.
Virtual Production artists can now, for the first time, perform advanced live-compositing tasks in real-time, creating previz-and final-pixel composites using Notch Blocks inside Assimilate Live FX Studio. Notch Blocks running in Live FX Studio allow for real-time adjustments of any parameter, such as lighting, virtual TV-inputs, the position of various objects, and the virtual-camera position and angle. Incoming data from various camera tracking solutions can be linked to the virtual camera of the 3D scene to create the perfect composite.
If you are not familiar with Notch, it is a real-time visual-creation tool Powered by high quality real-time rendering as well as reference-level offline rendering techniques. Notch technology powers visuals for acts from U2 to Beyoncé and Ed Sheeran, Eurovision, The Brits, and numerous music events worldwide. Its technology offers solutions for artists, for live and for XR/AR.
A video of Live FX Studio rendering two camera angles from a 3D Notch Block onto a single LED wall can be seen above.
Below you can watch a four-part tutorial series on how to use Notch Blocks in virtual production workflows, post workflows, QC sessions, and how to master and transcode material to NotchLC.
Redefined Post Workflow with Notch Builder and Assimilate Scratch
Assimilate does not stop on-set. The same 3D environments can be loaded into Scratch for review and QC, or to be used in finishing sessions. In the finishing world, using 3D environments in a traditional color-grading session is a gigantic leap forward. Via Live FX Studio to Scratch hand-off, users are able to recreate the VP-scene from set, relink to camera RAW footage, and create high quality plates for VFX, including all frame-based metadata.
Assimilate provides the first fully color-and metadata-accurate NotchLC mastering solution, ensuring that content looks as intended on the big screen.
Scratch has become a tent pole in dailies creation and content mastering. With its just released version 9.5 it now also allows not only Notch Blocks, but literally, any format to be transcoded to Notch’s high-performance video codec NotchLC for live productions and big-screen or LED-wall installations. This includes any color grading, animation or color space conversions that have been applied to the footage inside Scratch. When exporting to NotchLC, Scratch will automatically write all metadata to the file where it can be correctly interpreted and displayed on the target media server.
Scratch can also be used as a lightweight asset-management and media-server tool to play out any kind of content on an LED wall installation.
Pricing & Availability
To open and playback Notch Blocks inside Live FX Studio or Scratch, a Notch Playback license is required. Scratch supports decoding of NotchLC. Encoding of NotchLC is currently provided under a special license, free of charge, until December 31, 2022. A watermarked 30-day trial license of Scratch and Live FX Studio with Notch encoding support can be obtained at this link.
Pricing for Live FX Studio starts at $495 USD per month; Scratch starts at $89 USD per month.
