We are absolutely delighted the our friends at REWIND have won two VR Awards for their beautiful Magic Butterfly immersive VR experience for Welsh National Opera. REWIND won both the Immersive Heritage & Leisure Award and The Immersive Art Award. CAMERA was proud to collaborate on technical elements of this project.

The project involved capturing body and face motion data from world renowned soprano, Karah Son, whilst she performed the much-loved aria, ‘Un Bel Di,’ from the opera, Madam Butterfly. The capture involved finding a solution to capturing the movement of the sleeves on the digital Madam Butterfly avatar’s kimono for use in real time pre-visualisation. As cloth simulations can be problematic in real time, CAMERA Head of Studio, Martin Parsons, found a novel solution involving attaching markered netting to Karah’s arms to simulate the movement of the fabric. The solution worked really well and provided an invaluable insight into how the fabric movement will look when fully rendered in the environment.

The experience launched in Cardiff in July 2017, before touring other locations in Wales and England. Magic Butterfly is housed inside a shipping container that has been specially designed by Welsh designer Gwyn Eiddior to help create a fully immersive experience for audiences. Full details of the tour can be found here.