The client wanted the ability to see the whole map superimposed as a 3D AR object in their studio and be able to trace the movement of teams throughout the map whilst the presenter and players could talk the audience through the key moments.

Solution

We took our Ignition framework and built a control system to allow operators to select the key moments and play through them on cue.

Data

Fanview provided an API from PUBGs data set in the form of JSON feeds on multiple HTTP endpoints. For this graphic we didn’t need to know every element of data (for example which player had which type of grenades, or which weapon they were using - all of which was available) but we did need relevant data for the graphic. This is where the original specification of the graphics functionality is so important. We worked closely with the client to understand the specification well, and to see how the technology could best tell the story.

So, from the JSON endpoints we only took the data relevant to us:

• Flight path of the plane that drops the players
• Team routes & landing positions
• Position of the safe zone over time
• Location labels
• Kill positions

All of these would need to be presented with in-vision animations.

Graphics

Fanview provided a Cinema 4D file for the map which we imported to the chosen renderer, Ross Video’s XPression. From there we created all the necessary texture effects and 3D objects to create paths in real time.

Idonix added:

• Team markers
• Safe zone circles
• Team routes & animations
• Location labels
• Texture effects
• 3D splines to create the paths
• 3D model of the aeroplane (from a Cinema 4D file supplied by Fanview)

Scripting

A good deal of scripting was needed within XPression to create everything we needed. For example, placing the overlay objects such as kill locations, place names, flight paths and team routes and setting the data into each object. Setting the player images, team names and place names and triggering animations to make overlays animate in and out when needed: all done in VBScript.

Workflow

Availability of post-match had to be timely, so Ignition allowed them to cue up which teams they wanted to focus on. With the preview in Ignition they would step through and confirm their animations before playing them on air.

An operator could:

• Make a new sequence
• Choose to add place names
• Choose to add flight path & colour
• Choose to add safe zones & stages
• Select teams
• Add a pop-up video player at the final location with game play video from a live input

The interface gave data confidence monitoring, giving a red mark if anything was invalid or missing.

Once the sequence was prepared it was ready to play out to TX with confidence.

Data

Learning from the previous shows the client wanted to take advantage of the “in game time” data. This would allow them to recreate any moment from a match with a time stamp, moving to that position in the map for analysis. They wanted to see where and what each team was doing at any point in the game.

Graphics

At the client's request the graphics rendering was changed to Vizrt. This meant rebuilding the map and associated 3D objects and animations.

The map and the plane resources were Cinema 4D files so that part was easy - they could be directly imported - however the rest of the objects and animations had to be rebuilt. We used the cylinder primitive with a texture for the safe zones, and the Viz spline strip tool allowed our script to draw the team routes in real time.

Also, for the previous show they were only using two of the game maps - Erangel and Miramar. For this iteration Sanhok had to be added, so we had to import another map geometry. This map was half the width and half the height of the other two (thus four times smaller) so all the positions had to be scaled up because they wanted the map to take up the same amount of real space in the studio.

Scripting

Once again script was needed to achieve the complexity of animations and objects. The XPression script was ported to Viz script, adding the adding the time based functionality in the process.

In order to improve performance, we changed the way we sent data to the render engines. With XPression we were sending data every time the operator clicked live. This time Ignition calculated a timeline of events and created a Director in Viz with all the chosen teams points pre-loaded at the beginning of any sequence. This meant the data was sent once at the beginning rather than for each step. Now there was less chance of effecting performance whilst the graphics were in the middle of a camera move or animation.

If you do a lot of working in Viz Script you may find some of our tooling useful to help streamline your development processes.

Workflow

Ignition is renderer agnostic, so transferring that part of the tooling across took less than an hour. When operators sat down for the show they were presented with the very same interface they had used to drive XPression, but with added functionality around the “in game time” feature (the sequence builder was intelligent in that it wouldn’t let you add phase 2 after you’d added phase 3, but you could easily jump from phase 2 to phase 7).