Starting from 2021, HKDI Media Lab has started its development on digital human making, with the experimentation of different state-of-the-art technologies including real-time facial / motion capture, optical camera tracking, Unreal game engine and lately deepfake technology  

2021 – Motion Capture| Facial Capture | Optical Camera Tracking | Unreal Game Engine

2022 – MetaHuman Creator

2023 – Deepfake

Starting from 2021, HKDI Media Lab has devoted to promoting the application of virtual production technologies in film and television production. It is a revolutionary filmmaking workflow which adapts state-of-the-art media technologies such as extended reality, real-time rendering, optical camera tracking, pixel mapping, etc to lively create realistic moving images.

2021 – Virtual Production Application in Filmmaking

2021 – Virtual Production Application in MV making

2022 – Virtual Production Application in Filmmaking

2022 – Virtual Production Application in MV making

HKDI Virtual Production Studio, which has been in preparation for years, is officially opened in March of 2024. Located at Shaw Studios, the HKDI virtual production studio covers an area of ​​9,000-square-feet. Apart from the basic facilities such as a control room, laboratory and dressing room, the studio is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment, including ARRI cinematography and lighting systems that are widely used in the industry; a Samsung curved LED screen wall of almost ultimate ultra-high resolution (8K UHD) with pixel pitch of 1.68 mm fineness and Disguise platform integrates the entire virtual production workflow.

When the digital world intersects with the real world, the potential market is so huge that it has a profound impact on the fashion sector, including the development of digital fashion. The production process is a technological representation of how realistically the digital fashion are made, and the texture and luminosity of the fabrics need to be interpreted in details.

Photogrammetry | Zbrush

Photogrammetry | ZBrush | Hololens

Marvelous Designer | Maya

AT Network (Arts Tech Network) is a platform which aims to facilitate the exchange & collaboration between Arts & Technology in the local creative industry, powered by Hong Kong Design Institute and fully supported by HKDI Media Lab. In this online portal, series of professional articles will be published for research interest, each piece shares professional insights towards Arts & Tech integrations, provides international references for deeper understanding. And through engaging professional technology companies in Hong Kong a keyword search session is provided for listing search for the user’s own Arts x Tech match-up. Through this online portal, we sincerely hope the public will gain a better understanding towards the development & possibilities of Arts x Tech scene in Hong Kong, and open up new possibilities for collaborations in the industry.

Background 
HKDI Media Lab is a platform that brings integrated innovative ideas and media technological insight to academia and industrial practitioners in all design disciplines. The captioned project is to influence students with integrate media technology. On the other hand, it aims as showing the industry and stakeholders the creative energy and design sense of HKDI students. The project used an exclusive 10 meters wide interactive TV wall as the interface, and is produced by the media lab and professional artist collective from both Hong Kong and Japan.

Vision
To create permanent and impactful content that expresses the branding of HKDI Media Lab, and allow visitors to understand the lab and HKDI through an engaging experience. The work also planned to be sustainable by treating the content as a system as well to archive/ showcase featured students works. Therefore, the sub-content can be continuously renewed for long term purpose. 

Concept
To create a stunning visual effect, the artist had captured the landscape of Hong Kong through Google Earth and created 3D models, which eventually used for artistic interpretation of a unique Vitoria Harbour. On top of that, 4 independent buildings that designed base on primitive geometries were created to represent 4 departments of HKDI. The users can touch the buildings on the screen to navigate the corresponding information and students’ works. 

Technically, the 10 meters wide TV wall makes possible to present 8K dynamic real time images, which allow users to interact with the screen with close proximity while still keeping sharp visual. Moreover, the installation is the first project on campus that using body tracking interaction – while a user moving in front of the screen, a star in the content will follow him/her. When 3 users simultaneously touch the stars, a splendid scene will be triggered as a climax of the experience.

By incorporating the very classical conductive ink, the lab demonstrates to explore mapping of interactive display beyond using flat screens. The interactive interface actively engages audiences with varying gestural control for dynamic presentations of information as the Applied Research focus of the technical aspect. The research is particularly significant to explore the possibilities of having interactive information panel on 3D products or surfaces in terms of various materials like cloth(fashion), glass or wood(interior), concrete (architecture), plastic(product) and paper(printing) applicable to the industries.

The Interactive Virtual Aquarium, which was designed by Media Lab of HKDI, is an interactive edutainment project with the aim of promoting sustainable seafood in Hong Kong. In our long-standing dinning culture, seafood is one of the most greatest delicacy. Many foreign tourists would love to try the oriental cuisines when they come to Hong Kong. However, the surging demand on seafood will unavoidably bring heavy pressure to marine ecology. The species variety will also be seriously affected by overharvesting activities. To ensure that our dinning culture could be sustainable and brought on to our next generation, we need to act smart and learn the importance of opting for sustainable seafood. The project uses the format of digital cinema to display over 40 fish species commonly found in Asia. Through interaction with the application, public can access information like fish name, form and size, commonly found period, and relative sustainable index, etc.

The interactive Virtual Aquarium is an application specially designed for International Culinary Institute (ICI). In the aspect of graphic design, it inherited from ICI architectural direction. It employs a variety of irregular geometric shapes as design element to reinterpret the dynamic beauty of fish swimming motion. Together with bright and colorful lighting effects, it brings audience a vivid yet visually unified undersea world.

In the technology aspect, Interactive Virtual Aquarium utilized multi-touch system. It allows maximum 4 users to visit the application simultaneously. Also, it applied HDR setting to render out high quality 4K motion images. Unlike previous generation display technology, HDR technology could provide content with wider colour gamut. It could mimic up to 80% of human visible light spectrum so that audience could gain a much enjoyable and immersive visual experience.

This project marks a vigorous attempt to work with a multi-player platform that accesses an extraordinary experience of cordless 4D virtual reality (VR) mixed with tactile objects as part of the virtual environment. The aim is to expand VR technology to a future cinema application in which audiences are able to walk around immersive film scene environments. Proactive participation of audiences significantly narrates and revises the definition of film viewing. The applied research experience will gradually benefit HKDI research staff and students and inspire the industry to think about alternative approaches to a future cinema concept beyond the VR game.

The VTC Group held the ‘VTC 35th Anniversary Fundraising Concert – Making Dreams Come True’ at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. The theme of the concert was ‘dreams and hopes’, led by chorus art director Dr Henry Shek and the VTC symphony orchestra, who presented inspiring music. The concert made use of augmented reality technology to combine virtual and real scenes and bring a new visual experience to the audience.