SAUCE: a European project that will contribute smart digital content to the creative industries
On 12 January the project, coordinated by Josep Blat, director of the research group on Interactive Technologies, together with Marcelo Bertalmío, head of the research group on Image Processing for Enhanced Cinematography, held its kick-off meeting in the Tànger building on the Poblenou campus.
“Smart Asset re-Use in Creative Environments” (SAUCE), funded by the EU within the framework of the H2020-ICT-2016-2017 announcement of the Horizon 2020 programme, led by Josep Blat, director of the Interactive Technologies research group (GTI), together with Marcelo Bertalmío, head of the research group on Image Processing for Enhanced Cinematography (IP4EC) at UPF’s Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), are to coordinate over the coming three years a consortium made up of nine European institutions and universities. The project is endowed with a budget of nearly four million euros of which 600,000 have been assigned to the University.
Josep Blat and Marcelo Bertalmío stress the depth of expertise and the quality of the members of the SAUCE consortium, “precisely, one of the project partners, British software company The Foundry, has just won a Sci-Tech Oscar for its product Nuke”, the project coordinators explain.
SAUCE will investigate, develop, pilot and demonstrate a series of professional tools and techniques aimed at the creative industries in order to make their contents “smarter”, so that they are completely customizable to the context (facilitating their reuse), to the target (between or within the industries), to the user (improving the viewing experience), and to the production environment (making them future-proof).
The approach is based on research into light field technology. In graphic computation, light fields are produced from 3D models or through the photography of a real scene. In any case, to produce a light field, several views are required based on various points of the scene. Depending on the parameter settings used, the set of points can be part of a line, plane, sphere or another geometric shape, although can also be done from a collection of unstructured points.
The research involves other technologies such as automatic classification and labelling, using deep learning and semantic labelling to describe and draw inferences; and the development of tools for the automated processing of assets, intelligent animation, storage and recovery. These new technologies and tools prove that it is possible to greatly reduce costs and increase efficiency. They will also facilitate the production of more content, of higher quality and creativity, to the benefit of the competitiveness of the creative industries in Europe.
Project consortium:
UPF |
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Coordinador) |
ES |
BUT |
Brno University of Technology |
CZ |
Dneg |
Double Negative Ltd |
UK |
FA |
Filmakademie |
DE |
FO |
The Foundry |
UK |
USAAR |
Saarland University - Intel Visual Computing Institute |
DE |
IK |
IKinema |
UK |
TCD |
Trinity College Dublin |
IE |
DRZ |
Disney Research Zurich |
CH |