How Shocap Entertainment is launching circus into the Metaverse through blockbuster VFX and triple-A games
Shocap's ground-breaking techniques in extended reality, production quality visual effects and AAA games brings the art of circus, dance and theatre for live entertainment now and to the future of Web3
By Siobhán Hofma
When we think about visual effects and game engines, naturally movies and TV, cloud and console gaming spring to mind. And where many have visited a circus whether in-venue or viewed on television and the Big Screen, we tend to associate circus with travelling tents, up-turned faces gasping in awe with feats of superhuman acts performed under the dizzying heights of canvas and tent poles.
LiViCi, Carry Me Home June rehearsal at Animatrik Film Design studio
Today, the art of circus and theatre is catapulted into the future thanks to the combination of technical expertise and artistic prowess which Shocap Entertainment in Vancouver delivers through cutting-edge techniques in high fidelity real-time animation, stunning visual effects, game development, virtual production, performance capture and immersive – the foundations where Co-Founder and Creative Director, Athomas Goldberg and his team stem. Fusing production pipelines in animation, motion capture and VFX, with high-performance real-time technologies and hardware ranging from Epic Games Unreal Engine, NVIDIA, Autodesk Maya and MotionBuilder for mocap and animation work, artistic finessing using the Adobe Creative Suite toolkit and LED wall display tech. The company use their proprietary Ringmaster Virtual Performance System, a revolutionary new tool that connects all of Shocap’s technological solutions under centralised control. Rich VR experiences are brought to life through HMD’s Oculus Quest, HP Reverb and Z2 and more. To handle livestreaming, cloud hosting and pixel streaming for up-and-coming live show Carry Me Home on June 4th, NVIDIA, LiveSwitch, PureWeb and Heavenue have been employed to deliver the simultaneous experiences in real-time to online audiences across the globe.
Artists visuals, LiViCi Concert Series: Carry Me Home
“Our ambition is to entertain all audiences simultaneously with stunning hybrid live entertainment which excites and inspires the imagination, said Goldberg. “Through our 4-Audience Model of in-person performance, livestream video, interactive gameplay, and immersive VR, we’re pioneering new ways for audiences everywhere to come together, be entertained with quality productions and experience our events at any one time.”
Mocapped trampoline performers with Didier Stowe, real-time animation rehearsals at Animatrik performance capture volume.
Through his company Lifelike & Believable, Goldberg pioneered performance capture in experimental and ground-breaking immersive projects the likes of Glass Dance and Re:Verb with Emily Carr University, Reid Farrington’s, The Return digital art installation at The New York Metropolitan Museum, the Star Wars RealTime Live! demonstration with Epic Games, ILMxLab and NVIDIA, including time at Facebook (now Meta) Oculus VR, Microsoft Studios and Electronic Arts. With his vision to bring these skills to the industry of live entertainment and Goldberg’s deep expertise working with complex body movements consisting of contortions, twists and flicks lends itself perfectly to motion capture where the actor’s natural movements are livestreamed and retargeted directly to their digital character animations to move in unison within fantastical virtual worlds. Goldberg set upon the challenge to bring circus to life in an entirely new format. He sought out Samuel Tétreault and team of acrobats from world-class contemporary circus and theatre collective, The 7 Fingers, aka Les 7 Doigts de la main in Montréal to help bring his vision to life. Along with partner Animatrik Film Design, the innovative collaboration was formed in 2020 and The LiViCi Concert Series was born, LiViCi went on to claim SIGGRAPH 2021 RealTime Live! Audience Choice Award.
Carry Me Home motion capture test
LiViCi stands for Live & Virtual Circus, with the June 4th launch, Carry Me Home: A Live & Virtual Journey Into the Creative Mind of Singer-songwriter Didier Stowe débuting to in-person and global audiences. With two performances in one day and no pre-recordings, the truly live onstage show is hosted at Animatrik’s studio in Burnaby, Vancouver, the largest virtual production and performance capture volume in North America. Led by Brett Ineson, Animatrik’s VP and Shocap Co-Founder and Executive Director and his team, the studio is converted into a theatre for one day only. Seating 140 audience members, the show will be simultaneously beamed to online ticket holders around the world.
“Up until now the advantage of computer graphics has been the ability to iterate over the creative before rendering. With Shocap everything is live. Using game engine rendering allows us to break out of the computer graphics comfort zone and have the digital world reacting to the performance of the human actors in real time.”
Converting the Animatrik Vancouver studio into a seated theatre.
Whether attending in-person, online or donning virtual reality headsets, audiences are set to be immersed and entertained together through powerfully evocative memories, dreams and interactive fantasy worlds. Shocap takes circus to an entirely new level of live XR entertainment, with the fusion of live music, compelling storytelling, imaginative virtual worlds and awe-inspiring acrobatics of trampolining, hoop diving, rings, hair hanging and more.
The next show in the LiViCi Concert Series is slated for December 2022 with Shocap’s 4-Audience model of in-person, in-game, 3D livestream and in VR – all in full-force. Stay up-to-date by visiting Shocap.com