The programme, a collaboration between website specialist Bomb and television production company Ricochet Digital, mixes virtual (VR) and actual reality (AR) characters and locations in an entertaining mix of gladiatorial contest and digital imagination.
Although the television series part of the project is being developed at BBC Television Centre Studio 1 in Wood Lane, West London, the concept spans three multi-media elements. The first is a website that selects contestants for the show. Aspirants can construct their own virtual warrior and undertake tests to accrue points, which qualify the top scorers to 'play' on the show.
Secondly, there is the TV show itself, where winning contestants' warriors can become one of six 'house warriors' or FightBox 'Sentients' who battle each other to become the FightBox Champion. Finally, there is an interactiveCD-ROM product for games consoles, which also includes the winning warriors.
The TV show takes place in an elliptical arena in a studio approximately 20m wide by 12m deep, in front of an audience of 150 with a full moving and generic lighting rig. Here the Sentients and Warriors remain onscreen in VR, manipulated by real people pressing buttons on a game pad. The virtual characters and locations, and the real characters in the studio, are only ever composited and seen together on TV.
However, Le Fevre needed to light both the real world set in the studio (which is also replicated in the virtual world), and the virtual set on-screen, ensuring that the shadows and colours in both are matched and consistent - so he needed to find a company willing to design custom software. He approached Avolites and asked if they wanted to take on the challenge; the company jumped at the chance and duly created custom software for its D4 Elite console.
Running this special software, Le Fevre can light virtual sets, in the real world in real-time. He uses one set of D4 faders to change and control the fixtures in the real world (studio), whilst on a second set of faders, he controls all aspects of the VR lighting. The custom software also allows the virtual world to execute both real and virtual world lighting cues: for example, if a creature or warrior collides with a force field, that collision triggers a cue on the D4. The control system also allows a virtual creature to be lit by followspots in the real world.
Lighting in the VR world is equally as important as lighting in the real world. Each camera angle needs to tell the VR rendering engine the perspective it's looking at, so the VR system has to know what each camera is seeing. This is achieved using a BBC-designed software and hardware invention called Free-D. The Free-D tracking system has been used on a number of major projects, including the recent feature film Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Lighting fixtures utilized in the studio include Vari*Lite VL5 Arcs and VL1000s, plus four High End Cyberlights, all of which were supplied by Vari-Lite Europe. Miec Heggett is operating the D4, with John Bradford and Lee Allen operating the (real world) lighting rig with the studio's existing Galaxy.
