Graphics Processing in Virtual Production

Real-time rendering techniques, developed for computer games, offer great opportunities in Virtual Production. Ray Tracing has been used for CGI movies for many years but it is only recently that its application in real-time has become practical. This is partly due to improved algorithms but mostly advanced hardware such as the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3000 series of cards which provide hardware support for real-time lighting thus improving the quality of the rendered images in CGI. We conducted a series of tests for rendering of a Virtual Production scene in Unreal game engine. Images are rendered in 4K and output to a network distribution system where the image is broken down into a series of smaller images each rendered onto LED screens. Results were plotted to show the comparison of render times between two graphics workstations using Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU cards and Nvidia RTX A3090 GPU. Our findings state that whilst RTX produces better image quality the gains might not be worth the additional hardware cost required by the high-end graphic cards. It might also be optimal to split the rendering of the scene across multiple computers.