During the period 2002 – 2008 I was tasked with the design of the SCTV’s News division’s TV Backdrop Set utilizing the Virtual Set technology.

What is Virtual Set / Virtual Studio?

Put it simply, a Virtual Studio is a Computer Generated 3D Interactive Environment in which newscasters presents the news.

• A virtual studio is a television studio that allows the real-time combination of people or other real objects and computer generated environments and objects in a seamless, virtual reality-like manner. A key point of a virtual studio is that the real camera can move in 3D space, while the image of the virtual camera is being rendered in real-time from the same perspective.

Components of a Virtual Set.

• Camera tracking, that uses either optical or mechanical measurements to create a live stream of data describing the exact perspective of the camera.
• Realtime rendering software, that uses the camera tracking data and generates a synthetic image of a television studio.
• A video mixer, which combines the video from the camera with the video from the realtime rendering software to produce a final video output. One of the most common ways to mix the video to replace a chroma key background.

Pros & Cons

• Pros :
• Affording more flexibility.
• Adding more creativity to the designs.
• Cost savings in productions.
• No physical materials needed.
•  No materials warehouse needed.
• Less manpower needed.
• Less production time

• Cons :
• Costly investment.
• Relatively complex maintenance system.

During the 2002-2008 period many sets were created for the requirement of the Liputan 6, SCTV’s News Division. They will be featured later on this website.