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Corona: Andrew Cass lights virtual Spaga stage with Chauvet

Philadelphia-based trio Spaga played a virtual set on a 3D stage at “Quarantine Comes Alive”, a one-day fundraising festival, presented by Live For Live Music, the Covid-19 Relief Fund, and Nugs.tv. Andrew Cass of C2 Design & Drafting created the virtual show that featured a collection of 75 Chauvet Professional fixtures.

The creative process behind the virtual production began in April 2020 when each band member took 16 photos of himself from different angles while in quarantine. Working with animator Arielle D’Ornellas, Cass used these photos to create 3D renderings of the musicians.

“I have been struggling with realistic looking humans in 3D for some time now,” says Cass. “This led to us having the different photos taken. Arielle used them as the basis for creating the real to life renderings that were the basis of our 3D images.”

Cass also had the band members take videos of themselves at home. This footage and the 3D images were merged together in a virtual stage set that balanced the “real” video images with the realistic renderings. The videos were displayed on vertical screens that ran across the backdrop, while the 3D “band members” played their “3D instruments” on the virtual stage.

The light show’s color and patterns were furnished by six Maverick MK2 Wash units on the overhead rig, with one being positioned directly over each musician, as well as 27 Rogue R1 FX-B fixtures arranged along the bottom of the curtain on the inside, and 27 Colorado Solo Batten units matching them outside the curtains. Also included in the rig were three Ovation E-910FC ellipsoidals (used as front lights) and 12 Maverick MK3 Spot fixtures in the air, six mid-stage and six upstage.

The virtual concert took place in a room Cass created primarily from Google 3D Warehouse, modifying it to fit the needs of the project by adding elements like an arena ticket counter, a curtain, and balcony rails. Syncing up the cameras in the 3D environment was critically important to creating the realistic show. Cass did this by putting the audio track into Ableton Live and having software output the audio along with a timecode signal. He then dropped the camera shots into Resolume and offset them to the timecode signal.

“The crucial factor in this process was to sync them after the video had been routed in the 3D environment using NDI,” says Cass. “This was important, because all of these steps add some level of latency. So, by syncing them after all that was done, we ensured that the videos stayed in time with the audio in the final product.”

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