Any environment. Any time. In camera.
Real-time Unreal Engine environments on LED walls — reflections, lighting, and parallax all captured in camera. No green screen. No post compositing. Final pixel on set.
Why brands shoot on the volume
Virtual production changes what is possible on set — and what it takes to get there. Here is what shooting on an LED volume unlocks that locations and green screen can’t.
Any location, any forecast
A city sidewalk, a mountain pass, a retail floor — built on the wall and shot from our stage. No permits, no scouts, no flights, and no day lost to rain. Switch locations in minutes, not days.
Shoot winter in July
Film the holiday campaign in summer and the summer campaign in January. Hold golden hour for a full shoot day, or move the sun between takes. The season becomes a setting, not a scheduling problem.
Never shut down a store to shoot in it
We rebuild your retail floor, restaurant, or branch on the volume — open, lit, and fully stocked — without closing a location or paying for after-hours access. It’s how we shot the Cox store.
Final Pixel In Camera
What you see on the LED wall is what the camera captures. Reflections, lighting, and backgrounds are real on set — no compositing, rotoscoping, or green spill cleanup in post.
Immersive Performances
Actors see and react to their environment in real time. Natural sightlines and authentic interaction with the scene — none of the blank-wall fatigue of green screen.
Accurate Reflections
Reflective and transparent surfaces — car paint, glass, metal, liquid — pick up real light from the LED wall. On green screen, these surfaces require extensive post cleanup.
Reduced Post-Production
When backgrounds are captured in camera, compositing budgets shrink and delivery timelines compress. Post teams focus on finishing rather than building.
Faster Shoot Days
Multiple environments in a single day. No company moves, no set rebuilds between locations. Crews stay productive on stage the entire day.
Creative Iteration On Set
Directors and DPs adjust the virtual environment live. Move the sun, change the skyline, swap a background. Decisions happen in the moment, not months later in post.
Recent virtual production
Cinematic campaigns captured in camera on our LED volumes.
Modern Warfare 4
Pre-order trailer for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 on Nintendo Switch 2, directed by David M. Gil for agency Aspect. Virtual production at our Los Angeles stage with Cinedept — live action and motion control combined with real-time Unreal Engine environments captured in camera on the LED volume. Watch how it was shot →
Family Plan
Retail brand spot built around a graduate moving off the family plan. Shot on our Atlanta LED volume with the store environment running live on the wall — a full retail location, no location day and no set build, captured in camera.
Airline of Choice
Cinematic brand campaign for Delta Airlines in partnership with creative agency Heards Creek. Every destination — gates, terminals, skylines — built by our in-house VAD team and captured in camera on our LED volume with real-time Unreal Engine.
Brand Film
Brand film for CAT spanning twelve distinct environments — every world designed in Unreal Engine by our in-house VAD team and captured on our LED volume with motion-control camera moves. No location days, no company moves. Twelve environments, one production schedule, every frame in camera.
Maybach Night Series
Car process shoot for the Mercedes-Benz Maybach Night Series. The car stationary on our LED volume, the world flying past in real-time Unreal Engine — streetlights, skylines, and reflections rolling across the paint live, every pass captured in camera.
What teams are shooting
How a VP shoot works
From first call to final delivery, here is what a virtual production engagement looks like at Form Studios.
Consult & Scope
- Creative brief and technical review
- Script breakdown and shot planning
- Budget alignment and stage selection
- Timeline and deliverables defined
Pre-Production
- Virtual art department builds environments
- Virtual location scouting in Unreal Engine
- Pre-visualization of camera moves and lighting
- Stakeholder review and approval before shoot day
Production
- On-set UE artist and VP supervisor
- Real-time environment control and adjustments
- In-camera VFX captured live
- Multiple environments shot in a single day
Wrap & Delivery
- Footage reviewed and selects pulled on stage
- Backgrounds captured final — no compositing queue
- Color pipeline managed from wall to deliverable
- Faster turnaround from wrap to air
A Gaussian-splat scan of the real stage — the same spatial capture we play back on the wall. Look around before you book.
We build the worlds
Every element on the LED wall — architecture, sky, floor, the way light hits a surface — is a digital asset our in-house team designs and builds from scratch in Unreal Engine 5. Because we own every layer, you can change the wall color, move the sun, or swap materials live on set.
Environment Design
Our VAD team designs and builds custom Unreal Engine 5 environments from concept through final optimization. Art direction, modeling, texturing, and lighting handled internally.
Spatial Scanning
Multi-camera photogrammetry rig captures real-world locations as high-fidelity Gaussian splats. We scan, process, and optimize for LED volume playback.
Virtual Location Scouting
Walk through environments before shoot day. Directors and DPs review camera angles, lighting setups, and compositions inside the engine — no travel required.
Live On-Set Operation
A certified Unreal Engine artist is on set for every shoot. Real-time adjustments to lighting, weather, set dressing, and camera framing as the director calls for them.
Asset Library
Growing library of production-ready environments, materials, and lighting setups. Accelerates builds and reduces costs for common location types.
Multi-Format Delivery
We prepare content for any playback scenario — plates formatted for media servers, spatial scans optimized for real-time rendering, UE environments packaged for nDisplay.
What goes on the wall
The LED volume can display any visual environment, but not all content is created the same way. Each format has distinct strengths depending on your project.
Plates — Photo & Video
Pre-shot photography or video footage displayed on the LED wall as a background. The simplest and fastest content type — capture a real location on camera, bring it to the stage.
Best for
- Interviews and talking heads
- Simple backgrounds that stay relatively static
- Fast turnaround projects with tight budgets
- When the real location exists but isn’t practical to shoot at
Limitations
- No parallax — the background doesn’t shift with camera movement
- Locked to the angle and conditions it was originally captured in
- Can’t change lighting, time of day, or composition after capture
- Video plates must loop or be timed precisely to the take
Spatial Scans — Gaussian Splats
Photogrammetric 3D captures of real-world locations using a multi-camera grid. The result is a photorealistic, navigable 3D scene that responds to camera movement with true parallax.
Best for
- Real locations that are hard to access or permit on shoot day
- Preserving photorealism while gaining 3D camera freedom
- Environments where physical accuracy matters (architecture, real estate, heritage sites)
- Projects that need parallax but don’t require full environment control
Limitations
- Capture quality depends on lighting conditions and scanner resolution
- Difficult to modify the environment after scanning (moving objects, changing materials)
- Can have visual artifacts in areas with reflective or transparent surfaces
- Requires physical access to the location for the scanning session
Unreal Engine — Full CG Environments
Custom 3D environments built from scratch in Unreal Engine 5 by our in-house Virtual Art Department. Complete creative control over every element — lighting, weather, architecture, time of day — all adjustable live on set.
Best for
- Environments that don’t exist in the real world (sci-fi, fantasy, branded worlds)
- Maximum creative control — change anything, anytime, live on set
- Projects that need multiple environment variations from one build
- Full parallax, dynamic lighting, and interactive elements
Considerations
- Longer lead time — environments need to be designed and built in pre-production
- Requires a skilled VAD team (we handle this in-house)
- Most investment upfront, but maximum flexibility on shoot day
- Virtual location scouting and pre-vis included in the process
What powers the stage
Every component is purpose-built for in-camera visual effects and integrated into a single production pipeline.
LED Volume
Concave curved walls at a fine 2.6mm pixel pitch — built and configured to the production's spec. High refresh rate panels eliminate moiré and banding on camera.
Unreal Engine 5
Real-time rendering with Lumen global illumination, Nanite geometry, and nDisplay multi-node output across the full volume.
Camera Tracking
FreeD protocol with sub-millimeter accuracy. Perspective-correct parallax so backgrounds respond naturally to every camera move.
Color Pipeline
Calibrated LED output matched to camera color science. ACES managed from wall to monitor to deliverable.
On-Set Team
Every VP shoot includes a certified Unreal Engine artist and VP supervisor. We operate the technology, not just rent it.
Live Compositing
Real-time keying, color correction, and environment adjustments. Change time of day, swap locations, adjust lighting in seconds.
Media Servers
Puget Systems enterprise hardware driving the volume. Redundant nodes with genlock sync to prevent tearing, jitter, or dropped frames.
Pre-Visualization
Full shot planning inside the engine before shoot day. Camera moves, lighting setups, and environment blocking reviewed and approved in advance.
Where we shoot
Three VP-equipped stages across two coasts, plus a mobile unit we deploy anywhere.
Buford, GA
LED volume, cinema robot, fine 2.6mm pixel pitch. Our flagship VP stage with full production infrastructure.
Atlanta, GA
LED volume with OptiTrack mocap, cinema robot, and FreeD tracking. Partnership with Studio Space Atlanta.
Los Angeles, CA
6,000 sq ft stage with Unilumin LED, OptiTrack, and robotic camera. Partnership with Cinedept.
Mobile — Any Location
Not near a stage? We deploy a full LED volume, render stack, camera tracking, and crew to your location.
Common questions
LED volumes, in-camera VFX, and virtual production — answered.
What is an LED volume?
An LED volume is a large, high-resolution LED wall — often wrapped with a ceiling — that displays photoreal, real-time Unreal Engine environments behind your subject. The camera captures the background in-camera with correct lighting, reflections, and parallax, so there's no green screen and no compositing in post. Form Studios runs fine-pitch (2.6mm) LED volumes across our Atlanta, Buford GA, and Los Angeles stages — and builds walls to a production's spec when a project calls for more.
What's the difference between virtual production and green screen?
With green screen you shoot against blank green and add the world later in post, where lighting and reflections are faked and nothing is visible on set. On an LED volume the environment is live behind the actor, so reflections on cars, glass, and skin are real and captured in-camera. You see final pixel on set, which cuts post time and reshoots.
What is in-camera VFX (ICVFX)?
In-camera VFX is the technique of capturing visual-effects environments directly in-camera on an LED volume instead of adding them in post. The engine renders a perspective-correct background tracked to the camera in real time, so what you shoot is what you get.
Can you shoot car process work on the LED wall?
Yes. We regularly run car process shoots — including the Mercedes-Benz Maybach Night Series — with the vehicle stationary on the volume and the world moving in real-time Unreal Engine: streetlights, skylines, and reflections rolling across the paint live and captured in-camera.
How much does it cost to shoot on an LED volume?
Cost depends on stage size, crew, environment build, and shoot length. Our volumes are mid-size stages built to be more accessible than the largest feature-film volumes, and every VP shoot includes a VP supervisor and a certified Unreal Engine artist. Contact us for a quote scoped to your shoot.
Do I need to know Unreal Engine to shoot here?
No. Every virtual production shoot includes a certified Unreal Engine artist and a VP supervisor. We build and adjust the environments live and operate the technology — you direct the shoot.
Building an LED virtual production studio of your own?
Form Volumes installs the same LED walls, render stack, and camera tracking we run on our stages — for studios, brands, and universities ready to bring VP in-house.
Visit Form Volumes