Conecta Digital starts with the presentation of Technological Radar

The opening day of the first edition of Connect Digital (November 5-6, Espacio Cultural Serrería Belga in Madrid) has opened its doors promising varied and valuable visions of an “innovative future” in audiovisual technology and sharing the keys to the Technological Radar of the Spain Audiovisual Hub.

The day began with an introduction by Geraldine Gonard, responsible for Inside Content and main visible head of Conecta Fiction and Conecta Digital. In his brief intervention, he summarized the main pillars of the event, characterized by its more than 30 speakers, their pitch events and its networking opportunities: “We have two days of connection, innovation and creation ahead of us,” he stressed.

They accompanied him at the inauguration Hector Calvo, representative of the Ministry of Culture who has valued events such as Conecta Digital to “promote innovation as an axis to guarantee the future of the creative and cultural industries”; Raul Torquemada, from Madrid Film Office, who has put on the table the “impact of new technologies in the audiovisual sector”, and Rodrigo Taragona, content creator and entrepreneur who has seen fit to vindicate technological innovation and new trends such as artificial intelligence.”

Technological Radar: emerging technologies in entertainment

Luis Cueto, secretary of state for telecommunications of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and the public service, “with the audacity to be useful,” has claimed the first edition of the Technology Radar report, “a guide to that border territory in which one does not know if there is a precipice” or a technological opportunity. This Spain Audiovisual Hub initiative was born with the objective of being updated biannually with the collaboration of different industry leaders.

To Manuel Meijide (Digital worlds), one of the participants in this report, arrives at a “moment of tremendous change” in which “misinformation” proliferates, despite the windows to information around concepts such as AI. In this way, the report seeks to be a “rigorous voice” apart from other private reports, in which legal, ethical or juridical aspects are put on the table in a context of uncertainty for the production of VFX, animation and video games.

“It is born from frustration,” he says. Alberto Arenas, CEO of Bounding Box, by defining the usefulness of Technological Radar in the changing technology environment. To do this, the report communicates new technologies close to concepts such as AI and provides the tools for these to be implemented in different audiovisual productions. This particular “technological territories map", divided into quadrants (techniques, tools, infrastructure and languages and libraries), collects very varied brands, trends and concepts ranging from graphics cards to the names of innovative technology providers. Likewise, it indicates the degree of solvency of each item, dividing its category into "resist, evaluate, test and adopt."

In this way, within the area of techniques, while the “generative AI-assisted plan cleaning” is already prepared to “adopt”, the “Automated rotoscopy” is located only in the “test” phase. Adrian Pueyo, responsible for visual effects and VFX of Orca Studios, has highlighted how this last technique consumes a large part of the resources of VFX studios. The right technology, in this case powered by AI engines, will have “great potential to reduce the volume of work in rotoscoping, allowing us to generate more resources on creative tasks.” Victor M. Feliz (Motiva CG), in turn, has introduced the technique Gaussian Splatting (volumetric technique to help transform 2D environments into 3D), and has exemplified how Technological Radar allows us to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the platforms offered by the industry through the comparative analysis of four systems: Luma AI, Polycam, Volinga and NeRFstudio.