OSLO, NORWAY & ROCKY HILL, CT — The League of Legends World Championship Finals Opening Ceremony presented by Mastercard included a special performance this year. The Future Group (TFG), which specializes in interactive mixed reality integration, and Riot Games (www.riotgames.com), the developer and publisher of League of Legends and organizer for affiliated e-sports, used the Unreal Engine to bring a unique performance by supergroup K/DA to Incheon, South Korea’s Munhak Stadium for the event.
Artists Madison Beer, Jaira Burns, and Soyeon and Miyeon of K-Pop group (G)I-dle, united seamlessly on stage for a live performance together with their League of Legends digital counterparts Evelyn, Kai’Sa, Akali and Ahri.
"We imagined bringing our characters to life for the World Championship opening ceremony in 2013, but the technology didn't exist at the time,” says Viranda Tantula, creative lead at Riot Games. “Flash forward five years later and we’re finally able to make our vision a reality, thanks to our great creative partners at TFG and Digital Domain.
The in-house broadcast and creative teams at Riot Games collaborated with TFG throughout the production. Riot Games provided art direction and a base consumer-generated imagery model for K/DA’s lead member Ahri. TFG (www.futureuniverse.com) transformed Ahri into her popstar counterpart and originated models for her three group mates, based on concept art designs from Riot Gam
“Riot Games’ creative vision came to life with the help of our multi-disciplined team of film VFX, realtime character, and broadcast engineering specialists,” says Oystein Larsen, chief creative officer of TFG. “We are truly honored to have helped realize that dream."
Working with the Digital Domain team, who supplied the motion capture data for the characters, TFG brought the characters to life in realtime based on Riot concepts, complete with facial expressions, hair, FX, clothing, and realistic texturing and lighting.
“We are thrilled to have collaborated with Riot Games on the 2018 League of Legends World Championship Finals Opening Ceremony presented by Mastercard,” adds Lawrence Jones, executive creative director at TFG. “Collaborating with them on this stunning augmented reality experience to create hype and excitement from both esports and music loving audiences has been a tremendous success for both companies.”