The founding team here at Figment has worked with Virtual Reality for over a decade, so we were well placed to join the new Oculus-inspired wave of VR when it began gathering pace in 2013.
We began working on our first commercial VR contracts in early 2014 – and they were seriously ambitious! We delivered world’s-first visitor attraction projects such as Galactica at Alton Towers (2016) and Derren Brown’s Ghost Train at Thorpe Park (2016) as well as enterprise projects such as VR medical training tools which enable surgeons to perform complex surgery in VR and bespoke kitchen design tools for one of the UK’s biggest kitchen manufacturers. There are also countless promotional projects including VR work for pharmaceutical clients and VR theatres such as the one we created with Mather & Co at Wimbledon Tennis Museum.
Having delivered VR to around 4 million visitors in theme parks and museums we’ve learned a huge amount about what it takes to make VR commercially viable in a public space. We’ve developed entirely new engineering solutions, new software and matured our understanding of the unique challenges of storytelling in VR. We’ve created new camera rigs and new techniques for mixing pre-rendered computer visuals with video in real-time game engines. In short, we feel we’re in pole position to offer the best virtual reality solutions to commercial clients in marketing communications, live events, museums and heritage, and visitor attractions.
Figment has worked on a number of 360 video productions from concept to delivery, and we have done this using a range of tools, hardware, kits and procedures to achieve the best outcome possible for the client.
From the client brief and their visualised end-goal we carefully formulize the entire process through filming, stitching, post-production and delivery to ensure that we have the right equipment, skills and team on the project to deliver a quality product, and in the past we have used many kits and procedures from Go Pro rigs to the Nokia OZO and Insta360 VR platforms.
With our in-house film crew and editors and our post-production teams, all experienced with 360 workflows, we are able to deliver the best quality 360 videos. We were the first production company trusted to take 360 cameras onto Centre Court at Wimbledon for Final’s Day in 2016.
APPS & GAMES
Augmented Reality allows us to place digital objects and representations of people into real world environments and there is a number of ways we can achieve this with technologies such as smartphones, tablets, Hololens and Magic Leap.
We have created Augmented Reality apps and games for a number of our corporate clients for use in training and product promotion. Most recently we created the mobile AR app “London’s Got Character” which was created as part of Digital Catapult’s CREATIVE XR programme. The app aims to bring the city’s cultural history to life through its vibrant literary, artistic and historical characters who welcome us to key locations (Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre, Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street etc). We captured these characters using actors in costume and make-up with highly specialist ‘volumetric video’ technology, allowing us to create ‘holograms’ of real humans rather than computer game characters.
IMAGERY & ANIMATION
The CGI team is made up of highly skilled individuals with a broad range of skills. Figment’s geographical location gives us easy access to a fantastic resource pool of talent. Our team come from a variety of backgrounds including work on AAA games and movie/TV post-production including projects for Disney, the BBC and the latest Star Wars films. At our studios in Guildford we have a render farm with hundreds of render nodes producing super-high-quality images at enormous resolutions, as is necessary for multi-screen/projection projects. Additionally, our motion capture studio allows us to create realistic character animation on-site. The CGI team regularly collaborate with our in-house film team to create amazing visual FX shots, and have previously supplied CGI/VFX shots for use in the US TV commercials for The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, Orlando.
We work with all the leading tools in the media production industry, including 3DS Max, Maya, Unreal, Unity, Motion Builder, Z-Brush, Nuke and the Adobe Creative Suite.
We have our own in-house film unit, lighting equipment, sound recording and green-screen studio. We also have dedicated, broadcast-quality edit suites. We’ve delivered a diverse range of film production work from small talking head videos with a minimal crew, to large multi-camera studio shoots with huge motion control camera rigs and a cast and crew of hundreds.
Over the years we’ve used our film, video and VFX team on numerous projects, from feature length films, music videos, corporate work, cinematic VR experiences, pepper’s ghosts, augmented reality and much more. Our team is not only specialist in the traditional aspect of film and video but have vast experience of working closely with our other in-house departments to create experiences that immerse the viewer in new forms of storytelling. Our team works on projects that require a number of outputs from large screen projection, theatre, television, mobile, web and 360.
Our Cinematic VR Experience, ‘Kinch And The Double World’ has been nominated for two awards at Raindance Film Festival (2018) and was featured in the SIGGRAPH convention in Canada earlier the same year. For more information about ‘Kinch’ take a look at our projects page.
& TECHNICAL DELIVERY
Our software developers and technical team work with a range of platforms from web to mobile to bespoke high-end games and graphics programming work. Mostly, they produce interactive projects for public consumption often integrating with new, state-of-the-art hardware systems.
Our software and technical team are always tasked with the impossible, and they find a way to make it happen, from developing code to piecing together new hardware to augment or transcend off-the-shelf products. We enjoy a challenge and strive to keep ahead of the game with any software and hardware developments.
When a project requires it, we offer technical support and installation worldwide with specialist teams often remaining on site to support official launches and opening events. We also offer remote support and maintenance site visits following installation.