‘Doctor Who’ celebrates 60th anniversary by integrating rerendering for VP on set with Mo-Sys

NearTime, an automated rerendering service for on-set virtual production (VP) from Mo-Sys, has been used by the production team of the science fiction series ‘Doctor Who’ (BBC).

The Doctor Who 60th anniversary special has been executed on the technical side by Painting Practice. This boutique studio specializing in CGI, animation and real-time visual effects worked intensively for months to realize the vision of the British fiction production team. James Uren, technical director at Mo-Sys, explains: “This ambitious diamond anniversary Dr Who special was set to have more than 250 VFX shots, meaning traditional VFX approaches would be cost-prohibitive. So, we had to think differently.”

RealTime had recently been used on the Netflix production Dance Monsters, where 6 cameras and 8 monster characters were combined in real time using the Unreal engine and Mo-Sys VP Pro. Building on this development, Mo-Sys developed a pipeline to transfer Mo-Sys StarTracker’s precision camera and lens tracking data through post-production to help automate and dramatically speed up the VFX workload.

Once the workflow was perfected, Painting Practice was able to apply NearTime to the production of the Doctor Who special. The solution provided a dual workflow that enabled automated Unreal rendering in the cloud. Tracking data is rendered with backplates and returned with higher quality and resolution in the same VFX delivery window, while on-set renders are available for real-time commentary.

Thus, the combination of preview, on-set camera tracking, real-time preview, NearTime rendering and automated visual effects pipelines allowed this special to be completed “with stunning visual throughout at a fraction of the cost of traditional VFX,” as Mo-Sys itself notes.