Uppercut Studio uses Vicon optical tracking to track the cameras, which gives you pretty stable results for previs and live previews. But for a final, perfectly stable result—or in case the tracking fails—we’ve marked the greenscreen so you can track the camera in post.

To see what you’re doing, the CGI scenes are live-composited onto the camera monitor and also displayed on a 75″ TV, providing useful feedback for the camera operator, director, or actor. The overall delay is about 30ms — so not bad at all. The entire system is genlocked and runs on the same timecode.

The studio uses IBL (image-based lighting), so the CGI scene sends its colors to the on-set light fixtures via DMX, casting matching tones onto the actor. This way, the actor blends smoothly into the CGI background.

Yeah, we’ve mentioned “CGI scenes” a few times already—but where do you actually get them?
We use Unreal Engine for previs. In case of a lower budget, there are plenty of premade scenes available online for many use cases. But if you’re serious about the final result and need something unique, we’re here to help you create a custom one.