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Design Types talks with Zac Fields of Fox Sports about his thoughts in using the Chyron Duet, the use of 3D and some advice for freelance sports designers.
First off, will you please introduce yourself? My name is Zac Fields and I manage the Duet department in our Graphics division. I worked the last 7 years on the production side of FOX Sports. The last 3 years I spent with our lead crew working on NFL and NASCAR.
What design company helped with your new look? Drive Studios was the outside company that came up with the design.
Why did you choose Drive Studios? We’ve worked with Drive on many different occasions ranging from Super Bowl to the Daytona 500. Our VP of Graphics Gary Hartley is very happy with the work they provide. They are innovative, efficient and exceptionally organized. Their work is always first rate and in my opinion is the best in our field.
Why did you decide to stay with the Chyron Duet? There are many different reasons why we’ve stayed with the Chyron Duet. When me moved from Infinit to the Duet a few years back it was a large undertaking. The machines in the field were dying and the Infinit had become obsolete. We looked at many different options but decided that the Duet/Lyric was best for us. One of the biggest reasons for this was the fact that the Lyric software would be most compatible with the FOX plugin that was being designed at the time. We also like the flexibility to the end user that was provided with the Duet.
We have explored Chyron replacements but we feel that if we could get everyone up to the same standard we would achieve a solid consistent graphic standard (Hyper X2 and Lyric Pro would be our goal standard). We have also always wanted to get more into realtime 3D rendering. Lyric Pro offers this capability but until recently we hadn’t been able to utilize this feature. In the experimentation phase of our new insert look we made huge strides in realtime 3D. The ultimate goal would be to have all disks utilize mostly 3D rendering while eliminating the need for 90% of movie files. Our HD disks specifically NHL and NBA are using cutting edge technology in 3D.
What benefits do you have in using Lyric Pro? 3D aspects of the software are a huge advantage as well as the intelligent transitions. It is the intelligent transition that enables us to design animations to not only one independent message but to design animations from one page to the next.
There’s a lot of 3D objects used in your Lyric messages. Why did you decide to go this route instead of using movie objects? The movie objects work great but when there is a lot of versioning to be done. In the past each team would have around 8 movie files per team folder. If you multiply this by 30 for most pro sports and hundreds for college teams we can save time and money by phasing in realtime 3D rendering. We are not completely there yet but have made significant progress.
What software did you use to create the 3D objects for Lyric? How did it integrate with Lyric? The software that we use to integrate the 3D objects into Lyric was 3D Studio Max. Our designers (Drive) built their elements using Cinema 4D. Since Lyric doesn’t yet have the capability of importing the Cinema files yet we had one of our 3D designers open the files in 3D Studio and convert them to a 3D object file.
What advice would you give to a freelance designer when creating a graphics package? Some keys I believe are important are flexibility and vision for future expansion. End users are always going to be looking for ways to utilize components to come up with new material. Operators and artists that use your look each day can become bored of the newest material. If there aren’t enough tools provided, your graphic look and brand can be torn down by freelancing end users.
Is there something you’re particularly proud of? I guess you could say that I’m proud of the advances we’ve made in 3D. It was nice to be able to put to use a feature that we had not been able to utilize in the past. I’m also proud of the amount of quality product that our group is able to push out the door and support on a day to day basis. Between FSN and FOX Sports alone we graphically support around 4,000-5,000 events per year so it’s no small task to have our standards be met and seen by millions of viewers.
Design Types would like to thank Zac Fields for his time in answering these questions.
Link: Drive
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