2026 Accelerator Project

Objectives

Champions: EBU, ITV, IET, Digital Catapult

Participants: Shure, Heliguy 

This Accelerator prototyped, tested and validated an accessible, decision-ready digital twin workflow for broadcast and virtual production studios. Its remit was to help broadcasters, studio owners and creative teams to assess studio capability, technical feasibility, delivery risk and sustainability impact much earlier at the commissioning and pre-production stage, before budgets and schedules were locked.  

Designed for remote and distributed collaboration, the workflow reduces reliance on physical recces, improved confidence in greenlight decisions, and embedded sustainability intelligence from the start. The project culminated in a live interactive ‘dashboard’ demonstrator at IBC2026 and produced a repeatable blueprint for wider industry adoption. 

Innovation 

The innovation lay in using production-accurate digital twins as a shared decision-making layer for commissioning, combining photogrammetry, LiDAR, Gaussian Splatting, real-time simulation, IoT and optional VR access in ways not previously used this early in production. The project integrated creative, technical, operational and sustainability insight into one workflow. 

Voopla is the vital missing decision tool for productions. 

A one-stop-shop for: 

• Exploring Production Studios,  
• Making collaborative location decisions, 
• Pre-visualising how a studio will look with desired equipment, sets or configurations. 
• Integration with third-party equipment Digital Twins and data sources. 

Collaboration 

Collaboration was central: Digital Catapult worked with key UK broadcasters, Virtual Production studio owners and key technology partners to test globally relevant use cases. Together, the consortium rapidly prototyped and showcased a practical, internationally scalable workflow for more confident, sustainable VP adoption. This included scanning the ITV studios at Covent Garden in London to produce a Gaussian Splat 3D render. 

The project also saw Shure Audio and the UK Digital Twin Centre collaborating to explore decision-making ontologies.

VooPla helped explore future integrations between a platform for planning and decision-making, using broadcast equipment 'digital twins' such as array microphones, cameras, render rigs, and LED walls, as the equipment ecosystem continues to innovate. 

Proof of Concept Demonstrated at IBC: 

The team took to the stand at IBC with a working prototype of the Voopla online platform which allowed the user to walk through a shoot scenario where a Producer was searching for the right studio for their production. Voopla provided a wide range of parameters to choose from, including studio infrastructure, key assets, sustainability factors and location details.  

Voopla has the ability to offer log on credentials to multiple different types of users up and down the production supply chain and records key decisions and locks in sign off, at each stage. 

A long list of studio options is initially provided and once triaged by key stakeholders,  a final shortlist is held in Voopla where further refinement happens before the ultimate studio choice is made. From here we were able to demo a 'drag and drop' studio asset 3D editor, whereby the Producer can add high fidelity 3D versions of cameras, lights, props etc, to begin to block out and plan their shoot. We were able to demonstrate this by using the scan of the Loose Women set at the ITV studios which was produced by our partner Heliguy. 

This entire decision-making process from initial shooting brief, thorough studio choices and key decisions, plus sign offs and collaboration along the way, through to planning and previsualising the shoot, is all handled on the one Voopla platform. The final demo offering at the stand was to be able to show the attendees at the show a VR version of the studio scan, with those props added in, so you can 'walk' the studio and see your shoot come to life. 

View the Project's PoC Presentation 

Key Learnings: 

Sustainability data is a gap, but there are green shoots of solutions, and we note that BAFTA are introducing a new platform to help the industry better record their sustainability data. 

Decision-making involves many differing priorities from different stakeholders. Voopla does provide clarity in this process, which was validated by the producers that we tested Voopla with, in the early months of the project. 

This platform has the beginnings of a domain model for decision-making in production studios for integration with other digital twins. 

Industry Impact: 

The biggest compliment and impact we can offer is a number of people said, " it's amazing that something like this doesn't exist already ".  

And at least 3 companies at the IBC show wanted to know when they could integrate  Voopla with their own platforms and were surprised to learn that this was an R&D prototype rather than a live product. We are in discussions about where Voopla might go next with our existing Champions and other interested parties.