Pentakill launches new album with the most immersive virtual concert to date
On September 8th over 100 million fans across the world got to witness an incredible interactive band experience for the release of III: Lost Chapter – the virtual heavy metal band Pentakill’s first full-length album in four years. The concert was produced by the music division of one of the world’s leading game publishers, Riot Games, and hosted by the virtual entertainment company, Wave, which has developed incredible virtual concerts for the likes of The Weeknd and John legend.
Animatrik’s state-of-the-art technology and performance capture team in LA set the scene for the virtual concert, with the movement of real musicians tracked using cutting-edge, performance capture technology – the data directly driving their CG counterparts who were each designed with entirely new character skins. The concert took place in the incredible world of the massive, multiplayer online game, League of Legends.
Immersive action
Wave’s high-tech broadcasting tools and platform formed the basis of the virtual concert, with interactive VFX and animations generated using real-time technology designed by the acclaimed creative production studio, The Mill. It was through these incredible visuals that audience members were brought closer to the action, with added functionalities that made it possible to interact with the virtual concert live.
In the three weeks leading up to the virtual concert, a worldbuilding campaign using the alternate reality game (ARG) was launched to set the stage. This campaign included riddles, puzzles, and ciphered messages for fans and players of LoL (League of Legends) to discover previously unknown stories behind Pentakill – the virtual band that originated inside the video game’s universe. Through ARG, fans were introduced to a new LoL champion called Viego, who tricked fans into helping him use a disruptive sound to defeat Pentakill.
The added interactive elements in ARG were presented on Riot Games’ social media channels and were created alongside the production studio We Are Royale – this made the whole experience immersive for fans and players of the LoL community.
Performance capture for a virtual concert
There were several months prior to the show set out for The Mill and Riot Games to complete asset production ahead of the live broadcast. Wave XR ran the broadcasting and Unity Engine programming, while Animatrik completed the full performance capture session of the band’s real-life counterparts. Eight musicians in total were captured for the live show, including vocalists, Karthus and Kayle, guitarist, Mordekaiser, bassist, Yorick, keyboardist Sona, and drummer Olaf.
Animatrik’s studio is readily equipped for performance capture shoots of any kind, be it for live or pre-recorded projects. The studio was set up with 70 Optitrack cameras by Natural Point to capture the musicians who were equipped with motion capture suits. The characters were all retargeted in real-time – this type of setup is called passive motion capture. For the facial animation, instead of using a traditional facial capture system, iPhones and an AR toolkit were used.
Tracking the instruments as well as the musicians was a challenge, and with everything rendered in Unity, tracker placement was very important. Special considerations needed to be made while tracking the drum kits – the drums were full of reflective chrome which has the potential to block the Optitrak cameras. However, with proper marker placement and some minor masking of the glimmering parts of the drums, any disruption of the motion capture was completely minimized, and the musicians could play the same as a traditional performance.
A new era for Virtual Concerts
The final performance was a huge success, with millions of fans tuning in to both watch and interact with Pentakill’s album launch. On the night, viewers could virtually join the band on-stage, contribute to a live chat, and join in with team voting activities that changed the outcome of the performance in real-time. For example, players could vote to have someone thrown off the shoulders of Mordekaiser, Pentakill’s gigantic lead guitarist, and use a virtual canon to save the band from being destroyed by a meteor.
With such a high level of interactivity, this original performance has set a new standard for the virtual concert of the future, showing that performance capture and real-time technology can be used effectively to generate a level of immersion and energy never experienced before.
Riot Games Music dropped III: Lost Chapter immediately following the concert. The album is available on all major digital streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, Deezer, and more.