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You may not know their name, but you definitely know their work. Clear Angle Studios, a leading 3D capture and processing company, has been working on countless projects since their launch back in 2013, including Gladiator II, Alien: Romulus, Barbie, Chernobyl, Game of Thrones, Dune and Dune: Part Two.
Based in London, and with offices on several continents, Clear Angle Studios just announced a new full-service studio in Culver City, Los Angeles. A good opportunity for us to highlight this company.
We asked Dominic Ridley, Founder and Director, about some of their latest projects. He also told us about the services provided by Clear Angle Studios, their custom scanning systems, and the changing landscape of digital capture with the rise of AI and gaussian splats.
3DVF: Hello, Dominic! You are the founder and director of Clear Angle Studios, a company specialized in 3D scanning, with offices in London, Atlanta, Vancouver, Athens, Cape Town and Budapest. You also travel to get closer to your clients when needed.
What techniques do you use, and what kind of services do you provide?
Dominic Ridley – Founder and Director: Hello! We offer a best-in-class digital capture service including: photometric head scanning in 3D and 4D; facial capture; full body photogrammetry; prop, LiDAR, and aerial environment scanning and processing.
3DVF: You work with various industries such as film, TV, games, advertising, live events. Which of these are your main markets, and what kind of studios, client hire your services?
We’re proud to be the market leader in 3D capture and processing for the film and high-end TV (HETV) industries – these are by far our biggest existing markets. We have worked for many years with all the major film studios such as Disney and Universal Pictures, alongside lead VFX vendors. We pride ourselves on the great working relationships we have with them.
However, we’ve also recently seen a large increase in projects from within the games industry, particularly in terms of facial scanning. This is likely due to the continued convergence of high-end tech advancements between the two industries. Our face scanning technology provides powerful data for the games industry to create more detailed, and therefore more realistic, in-game characters – not only in 3D but now also in animated 4D as well.
3DVF: Let’s dive into some of your projects. You worked on Dune and Dune 2: what was your involvement?
We scanned all the environments for the first Dune movie with a photogrammetry drone, and were subsequently hired to do every aspect of 3D scanning for the second film.
For the Dune: Part Two shoot in Budapest we had a crew from London travel to capture full body and prop scans, with local crew from our Budapest office capturing LiDAR and textures.
The full body and prop rigs then followed production to the Wadi Rum valley in Jordan to capture character and prop scans on location. There, they were joined by one of our drone team, who captured huge areas of the landscape, and another technician was able to tie in ground-based LiDAR data to the drone scans.
The scale of these captures was challenging in itself, but out on location there are so many other environmental factors that can complicate a job, with one of the most common issues being the massive fluctuation in battery life in extreme cold or heat. On Dune: Part Two there were daily sandstorms to contend with, and we eventually had equipment simply stop working because of the sand. The remoteness of the location meant we couldn’t reliably courier anything to the crew, so we had to fly someone out immediately to hand-deliver replacement kit. The job can be tricky sometimes, but that’s part of why we’re proud to say we can go almost anywhere and capture almost anything.
3DVF: Can you tell us more about your work on The Substance by Coralie Fargeat, starring Demi Moore?
Two of our crew did a one-day shoot at Studio d’Epinay in Paris in the full body rig, capturing Demi Moore for full body and FACS (Facial Action Coding System), and her stunt double in the ‘Monstro Elisasue’ full prosthetic suit.
We subsequently captured a more extensive 3D facial scan set, as well as scene-specific 4D facial performance capture pieces with Demi Moore in the ‘Dorothy’ head scanning rig at our LA facility in Culver City.
We also scanned the amazing SFX (Special Effects) “fleshy blob” prop with a laser scanner and in our prop photogrammetry rig. These elements were all used for the climactic final scenes of the film.
3DVF: Back in 2018, Clear Angle Studios scanned the Grand Palais in Paris for Mission: Impossible – Fallout. How did you approach such a challenging building, with massive facades and a roof made of glass and steel? And what other tasks did you work on, for this movie?
The Grand Palais was an interesting subject because, as you say, it’s huge, and there is so much glass. With something of this scale you have to be realistic about what is going to be possible to capture, so we concentrated on the steel framework and the masonry.
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
For the exterior, we had a crew shooting photogrammetry of the stonework from the ground, and a technician on the roof capturing LiDAR and textures of the metalwork. The security services were extremely strict on what we were allowed to capture from the roof, as one side of the building has a direct line of sight to the Élysée Palace [Editor’s note: the French equivalent of the White House in the USA], so the technician was expressly forbidden from moving around to that side. We then moved inside, and captured scans of the interior from the floor and from the gantry near the roof.
We also had a 204 camera full body photogrammetry system on-site in Paris to scan the hero cast members and background actors for the film.
3DVF: 3D scanning companies usually do quite a lot of R&D to create dedicated rigs to make their work more efficient, and Clear Angle Studios is no exception. Can you tell us about Dorothy, as well as your scan trailers?
All of our rigs have evolved over the years as we’ve developed more, and as the needs of our clients have evolved. The current Dorothy rig is at least the fifth major iteration since it was first built in 2018. Initial upgrades focussed solely on improving the quality of the photometric 3D scan dataset, but more recent updates have continued to improve the 3D data whilst also adding 4D performance capture and facial capture capabilities. These additions give clients the option to shoot multiple datasets as part of a single session, something that wasn’t possible in Dorothy v01.
Similarly, the full body systems have been upgraded and refined to meet the needs of productions:
The XM ‘Scantainer’ systems evolved from the large, semi permanent system in our office to provide a portable rig for when indoor production space is limited, such as location shoots where there might not be time or space to build a marquee. Requiring nothing more than a piece of level ground and a power supply, these expandable container units are delivered to the location on the back of a truck and set up in a single day, giving productions a full-quality 3D scanning booth with minimal prep.
We also have “XF” systems, which are full body rigs built into stackable flight cases. These provide clients with a full-size body scanning system which packs down to the exact dimensions required for road and air travel, allowing us to cater for long haul jobs which might not be practical for the ‘Scantainer’ units.
Most importantly, all of our rigs deliver identical datasets, meaning that when a client receives a scan from us, from any one of our systems anywhere in the world, they can count on that data to be consistently.
3DVF: On the software side, many studios rely on RealityCapture. Others use Metashape, Zephyr, Meshroom, or in-house tools. What choice did you make, and why? Can you share some information about your workflow?
For photogrammetry, we use Reality Capture and Agisoft Metashape. They both have their advantages, so we might pick one over the other depending on the scan subject, or the type of output we are looking for. We have in-house pipelines for both, so we’re always able to use the best tool for the job with minimal fuss.
In terms of workflow, we try to automate wherever we can, due to the sheer volume of scans we need to process. At one point, we hit a peak of 90 simultaneous active productions, which required careful management of our resources. Automation also promotes better consistency, and all of the software we use works really nicely with this kind of batch processing. We use a lot of internal scripting to ingest and sort the data, and we also do things like align, scale and orientate the scans automatically. However you can never remove humans from the process, as scan subjects can be vastly different, especially when you’re dealing with prop scans, and it’s also important to have eyes on everything for quality control.
3DVF : Clear Angle Studios recently announced a partnership with DI4D and Texturing.XYZ on 4D facial performance capture. Can you walk us through this partnership, and what’s in store for the future?
We partnered with DI4D and TexturingXYZ in order to pursue our vision for a new standard of performance-driven digital human faces. For the first time, our groundbreaking 4D facial performance capture service produces per-frame map data to deliver a final product that is almost indistinguishable from recorded footage of a human. Our partnership offers a glimpse into the future of interactive entertainment, as well as the possibility of a single-service for vendors that combines all three of our specialist companies.
3DVF: With the rise of generative AI, studios, actors and extras are more and more aware of what can be done with their scans. Does this mean that scanning contracts have evolved in the last couple of years?
As part of the reforms that came after the SAG-AFTRA strikes, we have definitely seen an increase in the level of communication taking place around scanning. Productions are now contractually obligated to inform talent in advance when they will be scanned and give specifics on which shots or scenes the data is going to be used for. This is helpful for us, as it puts everyone at ease and talent are a lot more comfortable when they arrive at the scanning rig.
From a contractual perspective, the shift hasn’t been huge on our side. As an independent company brought in by productions to provide data capture services, we aren’t involved in deciding who or what needs to be scanned, nor do we have any direct contractual agreements with the talent themselves. As far as we are concerned, all parties should behave ethically and responsibly, and any capture or usage of anyone’s likeness should prioritise transparency, consent and adequate compensation. Clear Angle Studios’ responsibility within the chain lies in securing and protecting the data which we capture, and we ensure this by working to the strictest data security standards, audited and approved by the likes of Disney, Universal Pictures and the Creative Artists Agency.
3DVF: New techniques such as NERFs and 3D gaussian splatting seem to have a promising future. For our readers who may not be familiar with these approaches, in a nutshell, these involve new workflows since they are not polygon-based techniques, however they bring interesting features: for example, they can be used to capture and render anisotropic surfaces, reflexions, fine and detailed subjects such as foliage or hair.
Are you looking into these techniques? Are you using them in production, and if so how? And do you think these new approaches might become the norm in the years to come?
We have been doing some great work within radiance fields, collaborating with Neirin Jones and his company Prism AI to create some incredible results. We’ve done a lot of R&D in NeRFs and gaussian splats, amongst other techniques, and have already completed some commercial shoots for clients in this field too, which is very exciting.
Radiance fields are evolving every day and we are delighted to play a part in an innovation we think will become a normal part of CG pipelines in the future – we’re looking forward to seeing where it goes.
3DVF: The VFX, animation and gaming industries are in a crisis due to various factors, although many hope that 2025 will bring good news. What has been the impact of these events on 3D scanning companies such as Clear Angle Studios? And where do you think the market is headed in the months to come?
The events of the past few years have definitely been challenging for us to manage, as there has been no way to forecast when everything would return to “normal”. It was particularly difficult to make necessary time-sensitive decisions with any real confidence.
We used the extra time to focus on alternative commercial opportunities outside of the HETV and film industries, putting more of an emphasis on the gaming market, and also media, sports, broadcast and entertainment industries.
Thankfully, it seems that the wait for HETV and film productions to ramp up to full speed again is nearly over, and with everything that is lining up to shoot here, it looks like the UK will be back on top form from Q1 and Q2 in 2025. Hopefully that comes just in time for all those who have had a rough ride these last few years.
Production in the US, however, is sadly looking to take a hit now, with the majority of studios seemingly taking productions to the likes of Canada, EU, UK and Australia. Hopefully, in time, we’ll get back to a more stable equilibrium, so those who work in this wonderful industry of ours can get back on their feet again.
3DVF: One last question. What kind of projects are you working on at the moment?
We just announced the launch of our new full-service studio in Culver City, LA. This hub already provided scanning services for five major film productions and three game industry projects. This hub will offer all services Clear Angle Studios provides, including :
- Character scanning
- Photometric head scanning
- Digital facial capture
- 4D volumetric facial capture
- LiDAR scanning
- Environment capture
- Prop scanning
- Costume scanning
Also coming soon to the LA Studio : Radiance fields capture and processing!
When it comes to Clear Angle Studos as a whole, we’re hard at work on loads of incredible projects that will be released over the next few years. We can’t name names, but rest assured there are plenty of exciting projects in the pipeline. 2025 is set to be a busy year for Clear Angle Studios across various industries!
3DVF: Thanks for these answers! We can’t wait to see what you have in store for the future.
For more information
- Clear Angle Studios – official website.
- Clear Angle Studios in our list of studios.
