Polygon Labs Creates Olympics Virtual Set For Televisa

Sports channel TUDN, which is owned by Univision and Televisa, had a virtual set built specifically for Tokio Nos Une, a two-hour program of daily Olympics coverage.

The sets were built by Polygon Labs using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. The technical setup uses a Vizrt workflow, which includes Polygon’s Porta solution, providing a gateway between TV content production workflows and the Unreal Engine. Polygon Porta allows the operator to access the Viz Trio control interface to control the Unreal Engine at the same time, and with the same playlist, used to control Viz Engines.

The production uses Viz Engines for lower thirds and full-screen content and Unreal Engine for other aspects, all from a single playlist thanks to Porta teams. The four-camera Unreal Engine virtual set uses stYpe Follower tracking, Stypeland UE plugin and Green Killer as the internal keyer.

Marco Antonio Abad, Director at Televisa and TUDN, commented, “This technology allows us to be both creative and efficient. It means that whilst our presenters are hosting the show in Mexico, they all appear to be in Tokyo bringing sophisticated graphics to our viewers without leaving the Televisa studios in Chapultepec. The Polygon team quickly understood our ideas and were able to bring our creative vision to life with these four virtual worlds that mix with the real-life programming in a spectacular way. When you produce highly sophisticated live content like this, you can’t just use any company and expect these perfect results.”

“We’re really proud of this project for TUDN, which proved to be a highly creative collaborative process with everyone involved,” said Miguel Yabrudes, Polygon Labs’ Chief Creative Officer. “TUDN came to us with the four-world Tokyo concept and we all worked tirelessly over a four-month period to create this exciting Japanese virtual world. The finished designs look incredible and we couldn’t be more pleased with the results.”

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