Zero Density Redefines Virtual Studio Workflows at IBC Show

At the IBC Show, Zero Density presented a compelling demonstration of its advanced virtual studio capabilities. The demo transitioned from LED-based production to green screen — both running on the same software and hardware platforms — emphasizing flexibility and photorealism in broadcast environments.

Zero Density’s Reality platform has long been a leader in virtual studio production. Broadcasters like The Weather Channel, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Univision rely on the platform daily to deliver immersive content. This year’s showcase focused on the underlying technology — particularly the keying, rendering, and compositing pipeline that enables such high-fidelity visuals, 24/7 when needed.

Keying, Rendering and Compositing Pipeline

The demonstration began with a detailed look at Zero Density’s distinctive approach to keying. Unlike traditional keyers that use static green samples and tolerance settings, Zero Density employs an image-based, tracking-aware keyer. With access to a 3D mesh of the studio cyclorama and real-time camera tracking, the system generates a synthetic clean plate for every frame. This allows the algorithm to extract the original color behind each pixel.

The result is a superior key that identifies over two million shades of green in 4K UHD, requiring no thresholds or clamping. This preserves even the finest translucent details — such as a clear water bottle or strands of hair — without compromise. Even when cycloramas are unevenly lit, the system maintains high keying quality thanks to accurate clean plate generation.

Once keyed, the video is projected into a 3D Unreal Engine scene at the correct depth. Unlike conventional workflows that overlay keyed footage on top of rendered scenes, Zero Density’s method places the talent directly inside the 3D virtual studio. This allows real-time ray-traced shadows, reflections, and refractions, which dramatically enhance realism.

Final compositing includes natural effects like bloom and lens flares, further grounding the scene in visual realism. Camera focus is replicated accurately by matching the physical lens focus distance within the virtual environment, allowing rack focus effects even on fine details like hair.

The workflow also supports real-time foreground compositing. For instance, a translucent weather panel rendered in front of the talent doesn’t require an additional render pass. Instead, a matte is generated based on pixel depth: black for solid, and varying grays for translucency. This efficient, single-pass render enables AR graphics to reflect and refract live video — with no performance hit — even at UHD resolution and 60 fps.

Keep Media Colors

Another important capability highlighted in the demo was Keep Media Colors, designed to preserve the original look of external media (image or video) inside a real-time 3D environment. While game engines excel at rendering native 3D content, introducing video or still imagery into the default rendering pipeline can lead to unwanted side effects — including softness from Temporal AA, tone-mapping–induced color shifts, clipped highlights, and crushed blacks. Keep Media Colors addresses this by bypassing Unreal Engine’s default tone mapping and stabilizing exposure, ensuring that the original RGB values of the media remain intact.

The result is clean, stable, and color-accurate media that holds up during camera moves, depth of field changes, focus pulls, and motion blur. By minimizing temporal artefacts and preserving fine detail even in wider shots, Keep Media Colors ensures that live inputs, video, and graphic elements remain true to their source, exactly as required in professional broadcast environments.

To enhance the photorealism and add freedom to the talent’s movement, Traxis Talent Tracking is utilized. The AI-powered markerless tracker continuously follows the presenter’s position in 3D space and enables instantaneous rendering of virtual shadows and reflections, exactly where your brain expects them, maintaining a hyper-photorealistic scene. Tracking up to four people with one device in a 3D virtual environment is possible.

Enlarge Your Crane

Another standout moment of the demo was the introduction of Enlarge Your Crane, a feature designed to extend the creative range of crane shots in virtual studios without adding operational complexity. It allows the crane operator to intuitively control a virtual fly offset, enabling dramatic moves such as grand openings and closings while on-air. Crucially, this workflow requires no switching between tracked and virtual cameras and no pre-built keyframe animations. The camera operator stays in complete control at all times, with every move feeling natural and responsive. Combined with Traxis Talent Tracking, the talent is continuously tracked in a fully immersive 3D environment, keeping the camera locked precisely on position while the crane movement is extended virtually.

Our optical camera tracking system Traxis Camera Tracking (mounted on the Egripment TDT crane) powers the crane and delivers subpixel accuracy, ensuring seamless alignment between physical motion and the virtual scene for perfectly executed shots.

The demo concluded with an extended segment showing Reality Hub’s capabilities, demonstrating how broadcasters can pull data-driven graphics — such as a five-day weather forecast — directly into the virtual studio with templates.

The Lino workflow, the template-based content creation, control and playout solution for all broadcast graphics using Unreal Engine 5, is previewed in virtual studio and LED-stage demos and won the NAB Product of the Year award. This workflow enables template-based graphics design and playout for all broadcast graphics, whether 2D/3D or virtual, without switching between separate platforms. 

Centralized Control with Reality Hub

At the heart of Zero Density’s virtual studio ecosystem is Reality Hub — a centralized web-based control platform that streamlines broadcast operations across the entire production pipeline. During the IBC Show demo, Reality Hub played a pivotal role in orchestrating everything from rundown management to live graphic playout, all within a web-based interface.

Reality Hub’s open architecture enables seamless integration with newsroom computer systems (NRCS), studio automation tools, and external data sources. This flexibility allows broadcasters to control multiple layers of graphics, video walls, AR elements, and virtual sets from a single unified interface — reducing operational complexity and eliminating the need for multiple disconnected tools.

In the live demonstration, Zero Density showed how Reality Hub dynamically drives data-driven graphics using real-time inputs. For example, a five-day weather forecast was rendered inside the virtual studio using live weather data pulled directly into the system. This integration demonstrated how broadcasters can easily update visuals in real time, whether they’re powering news graphics, sports stats, or interactive segments.

Because it’s web-based, Reality Hub offers the added advantage of remote access and multi-user collaboration. Producers, graphic operators, and editorial staff can work together in real time, regardless of location. The result is a smarter, faster, and more scalable production environment.

Reality Hub not only enhances the operational flow of a virtual studio but also ensures creative teams can focus on storytelling rather than technical limitations — ultimately delivering polished, high-impact visuals to viewers, no matter the scale of the broadcast.

Production Assets Available for Download

All graphics showcased at NAB and IBC 2025 have already been released with Reality 5. This includes a wide range of production-ready content — from on-air overlays and AR graphics to a complete virtual set. All assets are free, fully copyright-cleared, and immediately available to Zero Density customers. In addition, this content is also accessible through the Open Studio License Program, ensuring that professionals, educators, and independent creators can explore and use broadcast-grade assets within real production workflows without barriers.

What’s Under the Hood

The virtual studio setup utilizes three ray-traced Reality 5.6 platforms, each running on EVO II Engine Hardware equipped with Nvidia RTX 4090 GPUs and AJA Corvid44 12G Video I/O boards. One is used for Virtual Studio, one is used for Augmented Reality and the last one feeds the LED wall on the LED stage.

Thank you to our partners:

Zero Density develops virtual production and broadcast graphics solutions trusted by the world’s leading broadcasters — including ABC, CBS, Charter Communications, FOX, The Weather Channel and Univision. Its flagship platform, Reality 5, powers real-time virtual studios, augmented and extended reality productions, and on-air graphics. Complemented by the Traxis tracking platform and EVO engine hardware series, Zero Density’s end-to-end ecosystem gives production teams the tools to realize their most ambitious creative visions in real time, without compromise.