Lytro Volume Tracer – Official Product Information

Lytro Volume Tracer - Volume Sampling (image: Lytro)
Lytro Volume Tracer - Volume Sampling (image: Lytro)

The text and screenshots herein are copies of Lytro’s official product information, provided here for information purposes.

Lytro Volume Tracer
Lytro VT is a Light Field rendering solution for CG content, delivering the highest fidelity, most immersive playback experience for mixed reality.

Lytro VT
Multiple virtual cameras are placed within a view volume of an existing 3D scene. Each individual pixel in these 2D renders provide sample information for tracing the light rays in the scene, enabling a complete Light Field volume for high fidelity, immersive playback.

Breakthrough experiences for pre-rendered worlds
Entertainment
Create cinematic virtual experiences, with full freedom of movement utilizing existing and new film-grade assets, transferring every detail of content into 6DoF immersive environments.

Architecture
Produce immersive photoreal architectural experiences, using existing design assets with full geometric fidelity, natural light-flow and surface treatments.

Visualization
Convert 3D scan data and existing 3D models into photoreal experiences with full geometric fidelity to aid with prototyping, diagnostics and education.

One Morning By Rodrigo Blaas
One Morning, an original animation, is a casual encounter with a robot bird in the middle of the wilderness. It is created by Rodrigo Blaas, award-winning animator and director, known for his work on Trollhunters, WALL-E, Up, and Finding Nemo.

“With Lytro VT, One Morning has a very rich and detailed quality in VR, which is really mind-blowing. Once you put the headset on and experience it, you don’t want to go back. It’s a new reality.”
– Rodrigo Blaas

The Power of Light Field
With Lytro VT you can create real-time immersive playback experiences with the quality of offline rendering, scalable to any volume of space from seated to roomscale.

Uncompromised Fidelity
Attain high visual fidelity and motion precision with six degrees of freedom, view-dependent lighting, and accurate parallax.

Industry Standard Tools
Leverage existing top-quality 3D assets from industry standard tools like Maya, 3DS Max, Nuke, Houdini, V-Ray, Arnold, Maxwell, Renderman, etc.

Merge with Live Action
Compatible with Lytro Immerge to seamlessly blend CG and live action for real-time playback on existing headsets with positional tracking at up to 90 fps.
 

We’re also including a related Lytro Blog Post from October 2017:

CG Power Up! Announcing Lytro Volume Tracer
Virtual Reality | Lytro | October 2017

We are thrilled to announce our latest innovation for virtual reality: Lytro Volume TracerTM (Lytro VT), a Light Field solution for pre-rendered CG content that delivers the highest fidelity and most immersive playback experience. To showcase this new solution, we’re premiering the world’s first Light Field animated short, One Morning, created by award-winning director Rodrigo Blaas and El Guiri Productions at On The Lot this week.

The challenge in VR for CG content is that real-time engines work in milliseconds per frame, and high-end cinematic renders can take hours per frame to complete. Lytro VT bridges this gap by enabling almost any render engine to produce Light Field samples of a 3D CG environment, which are then traced into a fully immersive VR experience. The result is an unprecedented combination of stunning visual quality — which matches the quality produced by cinematic 3D render engines — with full 6DoF and view dependent lighting effects, at 90 frames per second, in headset.

Unlocking a whole library of new and existing content, Lytro VT works with industry standard 3D modeling tools — Maya, Houdini, 3DS Max, Nuke, etc. — at full polygonal detail, preserving carefully crafted animation and motion dynamics. It also works with any commercial or in-house rendering solution, like Renderman, Arnold, Maxwell or V-Ray for simple production integration. Lytro VT even supports real time engines to crank up the visual quality levels. It allows a game engine to function as a highly efficient rendering tool for producing rendered CG VR with cinematic quality levels, which Lytro’s player can then playback in real-time. Lytro VT also seamlessly merges with live action Light Field content (captured with Lytro Immerge).

One Morning, was animated on the Nimble Collective, a cloud-based animation platform, rendered in Maxwell, and then brought to life in VR with Lytro VT. One Morning tells the story of a brief encounter with a robot bird in the middle of the wilderness with the rich and detailed quality seen in all of Rodrigo’s amazing work! Find out more about Rodrigo’s award-winning work here: Rodrigo Blaas on IMDB.

For more information about One Morning and the premiere at On The Lot, visit vr.lytro.com.