White Plains, NY—Zeiss will introduce its new camera tracking system at SIGGRAPH Los Angeles, August 8–10, 2023. Part of the CinCraft ecosystem, the Zeiss CinCraft Scenario is a flexible camera tracking system. Built upon Ncam’s unique tracking technology and Zeiss expertise in lens data, the system is designed for easy use.
“While camera tracking is known as extremely useful for pre-visualization and virtual production, CinCraft Scenario can bring major benefits to any production that includes VFX, as it can record the tracking data on set to be then used in postproduction, where it can help significantly optimize an artist’s workflow,” explained Tom Evans, Product Manager and Camera Tracking Specialist at Zeiss.
Zeiss CinCraft Scenario Features
CinCraft Scenario provides camera tracking data for use in real-time rendering engines for virtual production or live compositing. Additionally, it lets the user record tracking data for postproduction.
The new tracking system is a solution for practically every environment. This includes indoors and outdoors, on film sets, with green or blue screens and in LED volumes. This is made possible by its unique hybrid tracking technology. It not only allows for tracking specially placed reflective markers—the industry standard—but also tracks features of the surroundings, like object edges. CinCraft Scenario also works with digital markers on LED walls that are invisible to the main camera.
Furthermore, the CinCraft Scenario system makes use of the Zeiss database of lens characteristics: “When used with Zeiss and ARRI/Zeiss cine lenses, Scenario benefits from the CinCraft lens characteristics. Their inclusion makes the system plug and play and eliminates the cumbersome lens mapping and calibration process,” added Sundeep Reddy, Product Manager, Digital Cinematography, Zeiss.
Able to work with regular off-the-shelf equipment, CinCraft Scenario is natively compatible with major camera and lens encoder systems. Consequently, they can provide all the data the system needs to track properly. It is comprised of several hardware and software components that can be individually configured to exactly match the users’ needs. For example, the CinCraft CamBar captures the raw data out of the environment and sends it to the CinCraft Origin. It then runs the main software and aggregates the data to compute position and movement. Further, the CinCraft Link connects the CamBar and Origin and enables user interface access through mobile devices.
Moreover, the software components allow for computing position and movement and recording the data. They export the recorded data to industry standard file formats as well as for real-time inclusion in Unreal Engine.
CinCraft Scenario Bundles
Users can configure their CinCraft Scenario camera tracking system according to their specific needs. Or they can choose one of four preconfigured bundles. Zeiss will make the system available through dealers as well as the Zeiss CinCraft website by late fall 2023. It will also announce pricing later.
