When the stage disappeared, Dolby’s keynote went virtual — and stayed unforgettable.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Aspect Multimedia joined a global remote team led by 090 Media to reimagine Dolby’s GDC keynote as a gamified virtual experience — animating high-fidelity MetaHuman avatars in Unreal Engine to keep a marquee industry moment as sharp as it would have been on a physical stage.
A marquee stage, with no stage to stand on.
GDC is one of the biggest stages in the game industry calendar, and a Dolby keynote there carries real weight — the kind of appearance built around lighting, presence, and a live room reacting in real time. The pandemic took all of that away at once.
Dolby needed a way to deliver the moment virtually without it feeling like a downgrade: no live audience, no physical stage, and a production team scattered across the globe instead of in one building.
A performance, rebuilt entirely inside a game engine.
Aspect Multimedia worked as an Unreal Engine generalist inside 090 Media’s global remote production team.
- CAPTUREPerformance capture sessions translated into digital performance data for a virtual presenter.
- METAHUMANHigh-fidelity MetaHuman avatars built and animated to carry the keynote’s presence and expression.
- REAL-TIMEReal-time rendering in Unreal Engine, turning the keynote into a gamified, cinematic virtual experience rather than a static video call.
- REMOTE PIPELINEProduction coordinated entirely across a distributed, international team working through pandemic-era constraints.
Presence, without a room.
The goal wasn’t to simulate a stage — it was to build something that only worked because it was virtual.
Brand prestige, held virtually.
Need a virtual stage that doesn’t feel like a compromise?
Aspect Multimedia builds real-time 3D, MetaHuman, and virtual production experiences for brands that can’t afford a downgrade.
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