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IDEA to Demonstrate Next Generation ITMF Streaming

Jessy George March 30, 2022 Events, Featured, IDEA @ Events 0

The new demo, which takes place May 4th, 2022, will involve the streaming of hundreds of 3D objects in a complete 3D scene, creating a seamless 3D experience for the viewer. Now, the viewer will be able to watch and interact with longer form 3D content on multiple immersive displays.

For this demo, we will employ both Unreal and Unity game engines as clients. Over 90% of developers and content providers creating content for immersive displays are using these game engines to create content, so this is a major step towards bringing 3D streaming to a wider audience. The use of Unreal and Unity runtimes paves the way for targeting current and future light field based holographic displays such as the recently announced SolidLight display from IDEA founding member Light Field Lab.

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IDEA to Demonstrate Next Generation ITMF Streaming on May 4, 2022

11384eb March 29, 2022 Events, IDEA @ Events, News 0

 

 

 

 

In October 2021, IDEA presented its first demonstration of 3D streaming using the Immersive Technologies Media Format, ITMF. In that demo we revealed the possibilities of taking an ITMF file, extracting the scene description and assets, then streaming to a client from a network-based server. That demo can be viewed here.

The October demo showcased an early prototype of the 3D streaming platform, focusing on a small number of 3D objects streamed to a single client with attached display. Since then, engineers from IDEA members Charter Communications, OTOY, and CableLabs have worked together to improve the architecture and the pipeline for streaming 3D, and now have prepared a demonstration that takes 3D streaming to a new level.

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The new demo, which takes place May 4th, 2022, will involve the streaming of hundreds of 3D objects in a complete 3D scene, creating a seamless 3D experience for the viewer. Now, the viewer will be able to watch and interact with longer form 3D content on multiple immersive displays.

For this demo, we will employ both Unreal and Unity game engines as clients. Over 90% of developers and content providers creating content for immersive displays are using these game engines to create content, so this is a major step towards bringing 3D streaming to a wider audience. The use of Unreal and Unity runtimes paves the way for targeting current and future light field based holographic displays such as the recently announced SolidLight display from IDEA founding member Light Field Lab.

ITMF scenes, in this case designed using OTOY’s OctaneRender, are decoded using IDEA’s open source library, libitmf, and delivered over the network during the demo.

This method is unique in that our pipeline will demonstrate the possibility of authoring in popular 3D applications like Blender, OctaneRender, Cinema 4D, Autodesk 3D Max, and Maya, and then being able to translate the content to target Unreal or Unity runtime clients streamed across a network.

To enable this functionality, our client detects the GPU and CPU of the device and provides this information to the “network orchestrator,” which is our tool for sending the correct asset stream based on the hardware capabilities of the device.

This demonstration will show that there is a real pipeline for developers and content providers to stream 3D content to immersive displays using the ITMF format. As GPU’s continue to increase in capability across the industry on mobile and desktop devices, the ability to stream 3D content is now a reality.

In many cases, streaming 3D has multiple benefits over more traditional pixel based streaming methods, including allowing the 3D artist or developer to have more granular control of content based on device type and GPU rendering ability. For example, instead of using real-world cameras to capture and transmit information, we can use virtual cameras, which can provide either dynamic camera positions or hundreds of virtual camera positions.

The repurposing of 3D objects in multiple scenes is another example. The ability to leverage the power of GPUs to manipulate 3D content locally provides many benefits for both the user and the developer. In addition, this method also lowers input latency and bitrate, and allows reuse of assets, as well as several other advantages which will be demonstrated on May 4th.

Imagine being able to create content in a popular 3D application, export the project, and then be able to target multiple devices for lossless streaming across a network with each device receiving the optimal content for the GPU of each device.

To see the future of 3D interoperability, and streaming 3D from existing CDNs and future network delivery technologies via Edge, 5G and 10G, we invite you to attend the demonstration from IDEA on May 4th.

Posted March 29, 2022

OCT Demo Event, Video Now Available!

Jessy George November 22, 2021 Events, Featured, News, Uncategorized 0

Did you miss our October Virtual Event or maybe want to see the presentations again? Our event Streaming Immersive Content: Demonstration of ITMF over an Edge Network is now available on YouTube. Check it out.

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IDEA Interactive Webcast | OCT. 6, 2021

Jessy George September 17, 2021 Events, Featured, IDEA @ Events, News 0

Streaming Immersive Content:
Demonstration of ITMF over an Edge Network

Wednesday, October 6, 2021
10:00am – 11:00am  PDT

The Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance (IDEA) has been hard at work expanding the Immersive Technology Media Format (ITMF), a suite of royalty-free specifications that establishes a baseline for an interchange of immersive media.

To further explore and validate the functionality of ITMF, the IDEA team will be demonstrating streaming of holographic content encoded in ITMF format, through an orchestrated edge network. The end-to-end proof-of-concept exercise will showcase real-time rendering using Unreal Engine coupled with a holographic display. The demonstration will be accompanied by an explanation of the technology being deployed, and a question-and-answer session.

The demonstration will be presented through an interactive webcast. Attendance is free but requires pre-registration. Registration now open.

Register Here

Demonstration of ITMF over an Edge Network | Meet our Speakers

Jessy George September 1, 2021 Events, Featured, News 0

Streaming Immersive Content:
Demonstration of ITMF over an Edge Network

Wednesday, October 6, 2021
10:00am – 11:00am  PDT

 

Meet Our Speakers

 

Next week is almost here! No pre-recorded presentations here. Meet our speakers from OTOY, Mission Rock Digital, Charter Communications and CableLabs. You will have the opportunity to ask and get your questions answered live.

Attendance is free but requires pre-registration. Registration now open.

Register Here: Tickets here

Thomas Alder | Software Engineer , OTOY

Thomas Alder is a software engineer at OTOY and a recent BS Computer Science graduate from the School of Engineering at the University of Colorado – Boulder. He  and has been involved in IDEA for over a year working on the ITMF specifications, demonstrating the first ITMF demonstration during the 2019 Light Field and Holographic Display Summit at CableLabs, and participating within the working groups.

Pete Ludé, IDEA Chairman | CTO, Mission Rock Digital

Pete Ludé is a prominent engineering leader in advanced imaging and sound.  He currently serves at CTO of Mission Rock Digital, a San Francisco-based engineering firm specializing in next-generation media.  Current work includes display technology for next-generation cinema, immersive sound, and interchange pipelines for VR, AR and plenoptic (light field) imaging systems.

Dhananjay (“DJ”) Lal, IDEA Board Member |Senior Director, Charter Communications

As Senior Director in the Emerging Technologies team, DJ Lal leads the Immersive Media Practice at Charter Communications. In this role, he provides strategic leadership and direction on service delivery innovation over the network for Gaming, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

 

 

Austin Pahl, CableLabs

Austin Pahl is an Associate Software Engineer in Tech Policy at CableLabs and a contributing engineer at the Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance, where he contributes to immersive content production and specification development. He has a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of South Carolina and is finishing his M.S. in Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. He co-leads the development of libitmf with Thomas Alder.

 

Dell Wolfensparger | XR Architect, Charter Communications

Dell is an XR Architect for Charter Communications: Emerging Technologies.  He has played a lead role in VR, AR, and mobile application development for major brands: Disney, Microsoft, Thomas The Train, Penn State University and many more. His first foray into Virtual Reality was a 3D based virtual museum of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror for Forest Ackerman at Marlin Software where he was the technical and creative director. Since then he has been deeply involved in XR based enterprise and consumer products using Microsoft Hololens, AR devices, ​VR HMD’s and Holographic displays from Looking Glass Factory.

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IDEA @ SMPTE ATC

Jessy George October 19, 2020 Events 0

Are you attending SMPTE 2020? We are! You can find us in Exhibit Hall MAIN Booth C2.  SMPTE 2020 is an immersive, remote experience where you will expand your know-how on what’s new in motion imaging and media technology. You’ll leave SMPTE 2020 with the ability to incorporate what you learn into your own projects.

SMPTE 2020 “Game On” is being delivered as an immersive remote experience. The exhibit hall within the conference’s digital space will expose you to innovative solutions from leading companies in the industry. Return from the conference with ideas to help you and your team work more quickly and affordably. You’ll be able to select and recommend cutting-edge tools in a price-conscious way.

And remember, attendees with any of the all-access and daily registration packages are already granted free entry into the exhibit hall.

Here are some of the other benefits of SMPTE 2020:

  • Connecting Our Global Community. For each of the first two days, we developed a supplemental program that will accommodate our colleagues in the Asia Pacific region. This includes round-table discussions and technical presentations with speakers conducting live Q&A sessions.
  • Your conference, your way. You don’t have to miss a thing! Although there will be five sessions occurring simultaneously, as an attendee you will have access for 30 days following the event to ALL live and on-demand content including technical sessions, trainings, keynotes, round table discussions, networking events, social hours, trivia and e-sports competitions, SMPTE Storytellers, partner programming, and more!
  • Flexible and comfortable learning environment. SMPTE 2020 will allow you to attend from the comfort and safety of your home or office. This makes for a more relaxed environment; you can sit on your couch or in your office and just enjoy the presentations. Less stress, less fatigue, and more energy to dedicate to the content that matters most to you.
  • Price point for everyone. We want this event to be truly accessible to everyone. Our “Pay It Forward” package includes total access to all facets of the event, and allows individuals who are able to pay more during these unprecedented times the opportunity to help subsidize lower prices for all, particularly educators, students, those who are unemployed, or those who are registering from developing nations.
  • This year’s theme: “Game On.” This year’s theme spotlights the world of e-sports. Through a full day of programming, we will explore this convergence to understand both the unique and common requirements that make e-sports thrive.

 

We hope to see you at SMPTE 2020!

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IDEA Seminar at On The Lot

Jessy George December 6, 2019 Events, News, Uncategorized 0

IDEA Workshop on Immersive Media

Part of
On The Lot 2019
Produced by the Advanced Imaging Society

Wednesday December 18, 2019

1:30pm  –  5:00pm
Google, Playa Vista, CA

IDEA is proud to be producing a special seminar on new developments in advanced imaging and the new Immersive Media Technology Format recently introduced by the Alliance.  The seminar is part of the annual two-day “On the Lot” conference by the Advance Imaging Society.

Our media experiences have been evolving from traditional flat images, through stereo 3D, 360-degree video, VR, mixed reality and beyond. In this seminar, the Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance – IDEA – will look into the near-term future of immersive media, including the introduction of light field imaging.  You will learn about the technology for capturing and displaying light field images, and  the new Immersive Technology Media Format (ITMF) designed to facilitate interoperation between immersive devices.

You can sign up just for Day 2 (December 18) to participate in the IDEA Seminar.  Or, you can enroll for the full two-day event for an exclusive preview of the technologies and creative opportunities shaping our businesses in 2020.

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/on-the-lot-2019-tickets-81780813615

PROGRAM  Wednesday December 18, 2019

1:30          Overview: Immersive Media & Interchange standards
– Pete Ludé,  Chairperson, IDEA

The concept of “immersive media” is deceptively simple: using digital technologies to replicate real-life experiences. But implementing immersive media for storytelling and entertainment requires a rich set of advanced technology tools, and the media interchange formats and workflow to go along with them.

2:00          Capturing Light Field images
–  Ryan Damm, Visby

Light field camera arrays make it possible to capture objects (including actors) and environments in a life-like fashion exceeding today’s volumetric imaging sys tems.  With true light-field, it’s possible to re-focus an image in post-production, or eliminate the focal plane entirely by displaying the image on a light field display.

2:30          The Media and Application Aware Network     
–  DJ Lal, PhD  and Dell Wolfensparger – Charter Communications

Future media delivered in new “3D native” formats over Head-mounted and holographic displays shall require resources from commercial networks that engage a blend of bandwidth (high speed), server location (low latency) and specific types of storage and compute resources based on an awareness of the media and an expectation of the Quality-of-Experience at the end user. This session will explain the motivation and benefits of this architecture. An exploratory interactive (near real-time) experience with a ray-traced cinematic render will also be shown.

3:00          Break

3:15          KEYNOTE: Welcome to Light Fields
– Paul Debevec, Senior Scientist, Google

Paul Debevec will discuss the technology and production processes behind “Welcome to Light Fields”, the first downloadable virtual reality experience based on light field capture techniques which allow the visual appearance of an explorable volume of space to be recorded and reprojected photorealistically in VR enabling full 6DOF head movement. The lightfields technique differs from conventional approaches such as 3D modelling and photogrammetry. Debevec will discuss the theory and application of the technique. Debevec will also discuss the Light Stage computational illumination and facial scanning systems which use geodesic spheres of inward-pointing LED lights as have been used to create digital actor effects in movies such as Avatar, Benjamin Button, and Gravity, and have recently been used to create photoreal digital actors based on real people in movies such as Furious 7, Blade Runner: 2049, and Ready Player One. The lighting reproduction process of light stages allows omnidirectional lighting environments captured from the real world to be accurately reproduced in a studio, and has recently been extended with multispectral capabilities to enable LED lighting to accurately mimic the color rendition properties of daylight, incandescent, and mixed lighting environments. They have also used their full-body light stage in conjunction with natural language processing and automultiscopic video projection to record and project interactive conversations with survivors of the World War II Holocaust. 

BIO
Paul is a Senior Staff Engineer at Google on the Daydream team, and Adjunct Research Professor of Computer Science in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California, working within the Vision and Graphics Laboratory at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Debevec’s computer graphics research has been recognized with ACM SIGGRAPH’s first Significant New Researcher Award in 2001 for “Creative and Innovative Work in the Field of Image-Based Modeling and Rendering”, a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award in 2010 for “the design and engineering of the Light Stage capture devices and the image-based facial rendering system developed for character relighting in motion pictures” with Tim Hawkins, John Monos, and Mark Sagar, and the SMPTE Progress Medal in 2017 in recognition of his achievements and ongoing work in pioneering techniques for illuminating computer-generated objects based on measurement of real-world illumination and their effective commercial application in numerous Hollywood films. In 2014, he was profiled in The New Yorker magazine’s “Pixel Perfect: The Scientist Behind the Digital Cloning of Actors” article by Margaret Talbot. In 2019, Paul received a second Academy Award for Scientific and Technical Achievement for the invention of the Polarized Spherical Gradient Illumination facial appearance capture method, along with Xueming Yu, Wan-Chun Alex Ma, and Timothy Hawkins.

3:45          Introducing the Immersive Technology Media format ITMF
       – Arianne Hinds PhD, Architect, Otoy, Inc.

In October 2019, the Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance published its first public draft of the Immersive Technologies Media Format (ITMF). The ITMF consists of a suite of specifications that describe a new media format, and asset container to represent ray-traceable media for both existing and envisaged applications. Examples of these applications include: gaming, VR, AR, and emerging holographic displays. A unique aspect of ITMF is that it is display agnostic which means that it can be used as a basis for a production, mezzanine, and distribution formats for a variety of displays not limited to legacy 2D-based screen formats. This presentation will share the motivation for choosing the ITMF as a starting point for the work of IDEA, and elaborate on the roadmap for where IDEA will take ITMF in the near future.

4:15          Advances in Display Technology         
– Jon Karafin, Light Field Lab

New display technology is now able to reproduce an entire light field – that is, presenting light rays to the viewer in a manner that accurately reproduces real-life images (within defined bounds).  In this session, you’ll learn about how light field displays make this possible, and how they’re different from other volumetric and so-called holographic displays.

4:45          Wrap up

Book Your Pass

Save the Dates Dec 17 and 18 and Register Today! Seating is absolutely limited.

Through the generosity of our sponsors, registration is just $59.00 for one day or $99.00 for both days. More info will follow soon. But to guarantee your place, register today!

Register Here

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Streaming Media Advanced Forum | November 7, 2019

Jessy George October 31, 2019 Events 0

Join Dr. Arianne Hinds in a discussion about IDEA and the future of Immersive Media on the Streaming Media Advanced Forum (SMAF) on November 7 at 9:00 am PST. Register Now:

 

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XRS Week 2019 Partner | October 16-18, 2019

Jessy George October 10, 2019 Events, Featured 0

 

October 16-18, 2019| San Francisco, CA

We are proud to announce that this year we will partner with XRS Week and have an IDEA representative on site during the event.

Check out the event here: XRS Week

Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance (IDEA) To Showcase ITMF Demonstrations at the 2019 Light Field and Holographic Display Summit

Dell Wolfensparger September 26, 2019 Events 0

2019 Light Field and Holographic Display Summit

October 8-9, @ the CableLabs facility, Louisville, Colorado

IDEA will be presenting examples of the ITMF specification running on a wide variety of display systems at the 2019 Light Field and Holographic Display Summit. This is the first public showing of the specification showcasing the interoperability and robust feature set ITMF provides for creation and delivery of current and future media types. Multiple display types will be running content created directly based on the specification.

Attendees will have a chance to see up close how the ITMF format fits into the 2D, 3D, and immersive ecosystems and networks.

Members of IDEA will be on hand to answer questions and walk attendees through the specification. It will be an excellent opportunity to discover how developers, content distributors and media providers can use the ITMF specification to their advantage.