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CAPTURE / 11 — PHOTOMETRIC & OLAT
Photometric & OLAT Capture
A simplified OLAT set: cross-polarized, then a three-point beauty pass, then eight lights fired one at a time at 45° increments around the subject. The result is a likeness your vendors can relight instead of one with the capture lighting baked in.
[ 8 DIRECTIONS / 45° INCREMENTS / RELIGHTABLE ]
SRC / OLAT SITTING / SUBJECT IN DOME
WHAT IT IS
Light the subject from one side at a time.
OLAT — one light at a time — means exactly that: instead of lighting the performer once and recording how they look, the array records the subject separately under each individual light. Every exposure captures how that face returns light from one specific direction.
Because light adds, those separate exposures can be recombined afterward in any proportion. That is the whole point: a shot lit at golden hour and the same shot lit by a practical in a dark corridor can both be built from the same capture, without a re-shoot and without a lookdev artist guessing at how skin should behave.
FIG.11 / ONE LIGHT AT A TIME — DIRECTIONAL SET
HOW SCANABLE DOES IT
Three passes, one sitting.
Cross-polarized. First we strip specular glare entirely, recording clean diffuse albedo — skin as pigment, with no shine baked into the texture.
Three-point beauty. Next a conventional three-point beauty pass, so there is a reference of the performer lit the way a DP would actually light them.
Eight-direction OLAT. Then eight lights fire individually at 45° increments around the subject — a full circle of directional response in eight samples. It is a deliberately simplified OLAT: fast enough to run on a working scan day, detailed enough to drive believable relighting and to give a machine-learning pipeline real directional data instead of a single flat capture.
[ CROSS-POLARIZED / 3-POINT BEAUTY / 8 LIGHTS @ 45° / RAW COLOR-CALIBRATED ]
ALSO AS ML VIDEO CAPTURE
The same technique, in motion.
We also run this as machine-learning video capture on our modular arrays — the same directional lighting discipline applied to a performance rather than a static sitting, producing training data for the neural pipelines that learn how a specific face moves and how it responds to light.
Those arrays travel too, so the capture happens at your production, on your schedule, instead of routing cast to a fixed stage.
SRC / ML VIDEO CAPTURE / MODULAR ARRAY
WHAT YOU RECEIVE
Data a lookdev team can actually use.
- Diffuse albedoCross-polarized, glare-free base color with no lighting baked in.
- Directional light setEight individually lit exposures at 45° increments around the subject.
- Beauty referenceA conventional three-point pass for look matching on set.
- ML-ready sequencesVideo capture under the same discipline, for neural pipelines.
RELATED SERVICES
START HERE
Capture a face you can relight.
Tell us the cast and the lighting conditions the shot has to survive. We’ll scope the photometric capture around your scan day.
FAQ
Common questions
What is OLAT?
One Light At A Time. Each light source is captured separately so the subject can be relit later in any environment, instead of arriving with a fixed lighting condition already baked into the texture.
Is there setup time or a changeover between head scans, props, and full bodies?
No. The studio is configured for all three at once — 60+ of the cameras are dedicated to the head, so a head scan is not a different setup. A motorized lift raises talent into position in seconds. Nobody waits on a technician stacking apple boxes, and no performer stands on an unstable platform.
How long does an OLAT pass take?
1.4 seconds for a full pass. Every lighting direction is captured and separated in that window, which gives your lighting team a relightable asset instead of one baked lighting condition.
How long does an actor have to stand in the rig?
About 60 seconds door to door — that covers a hero scan plus a backup safety scan. The capture itself is 1/60th of a second, so nothing is asked of the performer: no held pose, no held breath, no repeat takes. Their time belongs to their character, not to our equipment.
How many cameras are in a Mobile CyberSCAN™ Studio?
150+ synchronized cameras and 40+ programmable strobes per studio. For a static scan every camera and strobe fires in one instant instead of sweeping across several, which is what makes single-frame capture possible. OLAT passes instead fire the lights one at a time.