MR Factory brings virtual production to the Champions League Final

The musical show of the Champions League final featured a virtual production developed by the team of the Spanish company MR Factory.

The studio, which specializes in virtual production and visual effects, was in charge of all the 3D set design and VFX development starring artists Marshmello, Selena Gomez and Khalid. Together, they performed a virtual tour on a globe through the sixteen cities of the teams that made it to the finals, all staged as if it were happening inside the Do Dragao stadium in Porto.

The project was directed and coordinated by the Los Angeles-based production company IYA Productions, and more than one hundred professionals were involved in the filming, including technical crew, artists, dancers and musicians. The creative concept for the piece was developed by British artist and set designer Es Devlin, known for also designing the show for the last Super Bowl, as well as shows for some of the most recognized names in the music industry.

75 MR Factory professionals

Óscar Olarte, co-founder and CTO of MR Factory, in addition to stating that the project has been “a technological challenge and against the clock”, confirmed that 75 professionals have been involved to make it a reality.

Likewise, it has counted with an important technical deployment: several GPU servers with more than 50 Nvidia RTX 3090 graphics cards, and software tools such as Otoy’s OctaneRender render engines and Epic Games‘ Unreal Engine as a real-time preview engine.

Change of stadium

The news of the change of venue two weeks before the event was the most critical moment in the production process, notes MR Factory. Having worked throughout the project with Istanbul’s Atatürk stadium and having practically finished production, the move to Porto “cast doubt on the viability of actually broadcasting the show”. However, the Spanish company was able to adapt to the change. In the words of Juan L. Bravo, general manager of MR Factory, “thanks to the commitment and extraordinary effort of the entire team, the “imp”ossible goal of moving all the action to the new location was achieved, which meant building the new stadium in less than a week and redoing almost all the footage in the following week, which has allowed us to reaffirm the full confidence of the artist, Pepsi, the show’s producers and UEFA”.

MR Factory has worked in the last year on other productions, including virtual production scenes for series such as Sky Rojo or the fifth season of Money Heist, both for Netflix.