Nightsky Studios Case Study

Nightsky Studios was founded in January 2022 as Scotland’s first dedicated virtual production studio, based in Coatbridge, Glasgow. As well as providing virtual production facilities for the Scottish film industry, Nightsky Studios is part of the Virtual Production Fellowship. This is a partnership including Screen Scotland, Blazing Griffin and Final Pixel, an award-winning global creative works with expertise in technology development and education. The Fellowship has been created with the aim of developing a world-class talent pool for the virtual production industry in Scotland.

Nightsky Studios spans over 32,000 square feet of indoor space, with two sound-treated stages, one workshop / build space and additional ancillary spaces made up of green rooms and offices. The newest feature is a virtual production setup consisting of a 30m x 5m in vision curved volume with full tracking capabilities and infrastructure. The screen consists of 600 Roe Visual Ruby 2.3 panels connected via a Brompton Tessera SX40 LED Processor.

Project Background

Virtual Production (VP) is a method of production that combines the physical world with virtual elements using real-time software. This can be achieved through different methods such as visualisation, performance capture or using an LED wall. One of the key benefits to VP is that creative decisions, such as moving elements within a scene, can be seen in real-time and this makes collaboration a much more stream-lined process.

VP studios use real-time 3D engines, derived from the gaming industry, to create a virtual set, display it on the LED wall, then sync the engines with cameras on set for enhanced realism and depth of perspective. VP technology takes advantage of the real-time rendering capabilities of game engines and the ability to apply visual effects to a scene in real-time to create a much more collaborative workflow and shortens production times due to the nature of not needing to transport teams and equipment to physical locations.

Virtual production is the fastest growing area in filmmaking, however establishing a cutting-edge studio requires expert knowledge and specialist hardware to effectively power the large LED walls involved. Nightsky Studios had previously worked with the Scan Pro Video team to design their content creation PCs, so it was an obvious starting point to start discussions about the hardware needed.

Project Approach

Following initial contact, there was several months of research, development and proof of concept to ascertain the required specifications of the PCs to work on content creation and the server systems to render images and run the desired Unreal Engine nDisplay software powering the LED wall. Consideration was also given to complementary camera and lighting equipment to connect to the server hardware and LED wall to complete the VP set-up.

The final server specification was a 4U rack-mounted custom design, featuring 2x NVIDIA RTX A6000 GPUs, 32-core AMD Threadripper PRO CPU and 256GB system memory. Five of these systems were connected using NVIDIA Sync II cards to drive the graphics for the LED video wall.

Alongside the server infrastructure, Nightsky Studios completed its VP solution with Sony cameras, Zeiss lenses and MoSys StarTracker camera tracking hardware. Additionally, an Arri Hi-5 Hand Unit electronic controller was specified alongside six each of Arri S120-C and S60-C SkyPanel LED lights.

For the studios’s pitchvis and previs content creation workloads, prior to rendering the images on the LED wall, they also specified three 3XS custom designed NVIDIA RTX Studio PCs, each specced with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 GPU, Intel Core i9 CPU and 32GB memory, coupled to an Asus ProArt 27" monitor.

Project Results

Integration of the five new VP servers at Nightsky’s premises have proved instrumental in attracting new projects to the studio. It has been used by multiple TV and film companies to produce a wide range of shows, driving huge awareness of VP technology in Scotland. It is also serving as an educational centre, delivering VP courses with Final Pixel Academy to grow knowledge of the technology amongst Scotland’s film industry. Learn more about this case study by watching the video.

The Scan Partnership

The Scan Pro Video team has acted as a trusted advisor and technology partner helping to plan, design and build the 3XS VP servers behind the Nightsky Studios VP stage. 3XS is the in-house systems integration division at Scan, building bespoke custom-designed workstations and servers for many specific use cases including professional video, audio, graphics and AI. Scan Pro Video and 3XS has worked in collaboration with studio executives to commission an infrastructure that would not only power their large LED wall, but also work seamlessly with the existing camera and lighting aspects of their studio environment.

Project Wins

simulation

Scotland’s first dedicated virtual production stage.

engineering

Education of Scotland’s next generation of VP technicians.

Scan continues to support raising awareness of VP technology through the Virtual Production Fellowship scheme, alongside NightSky Studios and Final Pixel Academy by collaborating at media technology events such as the Media Production and Technology Show (MPTS) and KitPlus.

Ben Bentley

Studio Executive, Nightsky Studios

"It’s been really nice to have Scan as a partner to be able give us that insight into what technology is available and how we can best use it to our needs. Basically, everything we’ve got in the studio came from Scan, as being able to have their Pro Video experts to lean on has made our lives so much easier"

Lewis Simister

Director, Nightsky Studios

"Having used them in the past, when we decided to go down the route of building our Unreal Engine nDisplay servers and content creation systems, our immediate choice was to go to Scan"

Speak to an expert

You’ve seen how Scan has helped Nightsky Studios and its education partners to design and develop its infrastructure for virtual production. Contact our Pro Video team to discuss your visualisation requirements and or discuss any projects you have.

phone_iphone Phone: 01204 474747

mail Email: [email protected]

CreativeBloke - Revolutionising remote 3D workflows with cloud workstation technology