A lot of what/why they are doing it this way, is realistic lighting and reflections. Im not sure the difference between a realtime game engine and ray tracing matters that much when you are using it as faux ambient light.
After it is filmed, they can still go back and touchup the backgrounds. Someday with ray tracing they can do real time finished products, but for now the tech works great at what its intended to do.
If a scene has been filmed in this setup, how easy is it to separate the physical foreground from the background screen if they want to re-composite the foreground with a more detailed rey traced background?
I imagine with the advancements in consumer level tech with portrait mode in cameras and zoom backgrounds that the tech ILM has could make easy work of this.
The system allows you to insert a dynamic greenscreen around a foreground element (while also retaining the option to preview how things will look after everything). So you can retain most of the virtual set for reflections and lighting, while still having a greenscreen.
After it is filmed, they can still go back and touchup the backgrounds. Someday with ray tracing they can do real time finished products, but for now the tech works great at what its intended to do.
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