So, the Cambrian Theatre that we were presented with to design was really around the idea
of creating an experience where there would be a really immersive 360-degree field of
view experience that would depict the ocean during the Cambrian explosion.
It would need to be a seamless wraparound experience with bright projection, high resolution.
The audience would be fairly close to the screen, so you didn't want to have low resolution
to see pixelation, that sort of thing, to really create a real photorealistic view of
what they would depict as the Cambrian error.
So we set off on the design and was presented with some ideas from them and worked out different
configurations based upon the building constraints, the area that we were working with, and we
ended up using our modeling software to design the theatre, the shape of the screen, those
sorts of things.
In the end, our approach was to think about it as an inverted dome and that the audience
would be actually inside of the dome rather than outside like we normally think about.
That would allow the audience to have a field of view that was above and below, and in fact
they really wanted to be able to go right to the edge and look right down, right below
their feet.
So we took those ideas and created some modeling and new software that we usually do to create
some suggestions that they thought they would like, and then based upon that, we implemented
it based upon what we needed to do.
One important part of that design was that they just wanted to have not a single eye
point but to have the experience of maybe being in a cage, in a shark cage in the ocean
where you can just turn around and see everything around you.
So that was kind of our approach.
So you can kind of see some of this idea of being inside of this bowl, inside of this
environment where you're in the center of it looking all around.
Our approach was like I say we wanted to create this theater based upon our current models
but we ended up having to change our software, actually our software, to model it.
The screen ended up not being a sphere and so geometry, those sorts of things had to
be dealt with and we actually had to redo our software modeling to accommodate the screen
and also to projector placements, how many projectors, resolution, all those things were
taken into account.
So some of the challenges we had were in creating this space was that you're now inside of
this screen and so how do you get the audience in and out and they ended up thinking about
bringing the audience in through the screen and we entertained different ideas but in
the end there was an entrance and an exit into the theater, we'll look at some pictures
of that in a minute.
The audience was in the center, they come into the center, they can walk around, view
the whole experience, roughly about 30 people, it's not a sitting environment, they stand,
they walk around, it depends on how crowded they want to be, if they want the audience
to be close to the railing, you know, be able to look out and see down below.
We had to take into account that there would be of course multiple projectors, edge blending
and alignment and with this being in an ocean where blue is kind of a predominant color,
blending was really an important issue, we didn't want to have edge blends that would
distract from this total immersive environment so for us using auto blending, auto alignment
was really important.
Also how to produce content, how do you communicate that to our customers in China when, you know,
the viewpoint and Michael will talk more about how that was all done but that was a big challenge.
Other challenges were again optimizing our software tools, we had to change our encoding
process, our geometry algorithms for mapping onto a non-spherical screen and then of course,
you know, we hadn't, we've done other things that were similar to this, years ago we did
the Total Sphere Theater in Japan for the World Expo 2005, so we had some experience
with doing things like this but this one was still different yet, so this was the Total
Sphere in Japan where people walked in and back out through the sphere and had a kind
of real submersive experience.
So here's some views of our design that we came up with, you can see that on the left
hand side, you know, there's an entrance and the audience would come in through an entrance,
walk across the screen, basically kind of like a bridge into the center area, stand
and they could walk around, the center is a post, there was actually a structure for
the building so it would have been nice if that post wasn't there then it'd been more,
you know, open and free to walk around, just another, one constraint of the theater.
Here's another view that, whoops, here's another view that just, you know, shows a little bit
better view of those entrances and exits and then here's another render that was also done
kind of showing what the experience might look like, so Michael will talk about how they
did the show.
Thanks Dennis.
And this was an interesting challenge too because ENS did not produce the content but
we sort of guided the production company called Motion Magic in China to create the content
for this first of its kind theater and so their concept originally was a show called
the Dawn of the Animal World and it was a submarine attraction where people were taken
in a submarine through different areas of a coral reef environment from the shallows
to the depths and then back to the shallows again and so to kind of think logically about
how to approach this experience because when you have something that is omnidirectional
where do you point the audience and so they called the A screen, they just arbitrarily
chose okay this side between the entrances here and here, this is the A screen, this
is the B screen even though it was a complete surround environment and so one of the things
that they wanted to get right first was the perspective of the audience and so let me
just walk you through, they started in the shallows, they went and explored that a little
bit, looked more to the depths and the scenes got a little bit darker and then they moved
back to the shallows and ended up there, that was the original concept.
So there's the A screen and the B screen basically and this is where the concept started transforming
a little bit from having like the hardware of a sub in the shot and instead of just the
audience virtually being in that transportation mode where they were taken virtually through
these different environments without some kind of hardware around them.
And here's a test of the ocean zone lighting so they had an idea of what the different
areas and the look of the blue was going to be and how they're going to transition that.
But with the perspective inside of here it's very interesting because inside a full dome
theater if it's a flat dome the camera, the virtual camera is always at the horizon, everything
else is above there.
So everything is always sort of above you in a dome or if you use compression and pull
the horizon up a little bit you've got an area where you can see the ground but you're
still below everything.
As you tilt the dome the center of that sphere changes its orientation from being right at
the bottom of the dome to it's in the center of the sweet spot, does that make sense?
And so when you're looking at that sweet spot, stuff above the sweet spot goes above you,
stuff below the sweet spot goes below you and it was very important in this environment
for the fish swimming around to not all be above or beneath the person in the screen.
That transition point had to be at their eye level so we had to help figure out how to
create a way to move that sphere down so that the heart of the sphere was right at the person's
eye point and then the lower part of the sphere actually extended way below the floor but
the way the angles of the pixels were rendered with the rays of light there was a virtual
sphere that extended way below the floor and perceptually it looked like it all worked
out just fine and you'll see some examples.
But we set up a mock-up at our facility in Salt Lake and this was really pretty cool.
It was a quarter scale or something like that, half scale, okay so the trampoline had nothing
to do with it, I don't know why it was there, it was just fun but in that box there that's
where you would actually sit to approximate the height of the person and when I did this
the first time it was so amazing because we are so oriented horizontally and down.
Most people don't look up most of their lives so being able to look down and if you see
people like the Oculus VR glasses one of the things that they will do is look down, they
don't automatically do this.
So being able to look down in this environment and look around was so amazingly powerful from
an immersive standpoint, I got really excited about it.
I still haven't been to the theater to see it for myself but you can imagine what that
must be like.
So here's an example of what the shallows looked like with their animation team and
the deeper waters.
Here's the setting of the Natural History Museum where they have the Cambrian Explosion
Theater so they have a ramp that goes up to bring you into the theater and then a ramp
that comes down to bring you out and it's just enclosed in this cylindrical space.
So here's a couple of shots or a shot inside the theater that was taken without an audience.
We talked about just that eye level thing and I put this slide in here again so you
can kind of see in this shot of these crustaceans you'll notice that break point.
So if you look at where their feet are the animals are going down and above their heads
are going up so they're right in the heart of that sweet spot so they're experiencing
it as if it's happening all around them.
And that was a really important key to making the show experience work and it's a completely
loopable show.
People can go in and I don't know, they're still doing soft openings now so they haven't
completely opened to the public but it is designed so that it is an end-to-end loopable
experience.
The first frame matches the last frame and they can just run it forever.
People can go through and stay as long as they want and that's how they could run it.
I don't know operationally how they're going to do it.
Now I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this because we don't have a lot of time
left.
This is just, I don't know if this is a video or not, I think it might be.
Let me see if it is.
It is.
This is the, it's not quite a spherical render but this is how they produced the dome master
so to speak of the show and you can see the A screen is above you and the B screen is
below you and that's the coral reef environment that they're moving into and I'll just scrub
through this a little bit if I can and it's not going to let me scrub through it, of course.
Why would it?
So it's very funky to watch this way.
I just did something.
Okay, let me show you this one.
This was just a bang together edit that I threw together in After Effects so there's weird
seams all over the place but it'll give you an idea of if you're looking at the screen
what the experience is like and imagine that sweet spot kind of right in the center.
So now the reef is above you and soon it will be below you as we go over the top of
it.
So imagine this surrounding you and going below your feet to experience the type or
imagine the type of immersive space that this is.
It's really a groundbreaking immersive environment.
So the results of this is there was an eight minute show produced in China with under our
guidance and the modification of our tools.
We had about 33 megapixels on the screen so this was an 8K theater, just a very unusual
one.
About three to five foot lamberts on the screen and you could fit about 30 audience members
in per show in that center area.
Created a unique production technique and tools for placing the audience at the center
of that virtual perspective sphere and it was a powerful immersive experience that goes
beyond full dome because you're actually inside the dome or the quasi dome experience and
it's uniquely suited to the way that we perceive things.
So that's an overview of the Cambrian theater.
