YES Network was looking to revamp their look for the 2023 MLB and NBA seasons with a graphics package redesign, and wanted to move to Viz 5 to plan for future Viz support and with the hope of eventually taking advantage of Viz 5’s 3D capabilities. They had an existing workflow of scene scripts used for data population and some intricate designs that would test the rendering capabilities of Viz. As one of the first major projects to be built using Viz 5, RCS faced the challenge of exploring the intricacies of the new software for the first time. There was also a challenging time constraint, as the YES needed the graphics several weeks prior to MLB’s opening day, but had a delay from their design firm in finalizing the designs of many of the elements.
Given the relatively flat look of YES’ new designs, RCS and YES agreed on using the Classic Pipeline in Viz 5 for most of the scenes, but did explore the new Viz Engine Pipeline.The intricacy of the design required some innovation from RCS. A scrolling team city text element in many scenes required a custom script to be written to generate and loop that text. Additionally, the background required a complex build of its own. With continually rippling elements on a loop, the RCS team developed a solution to build natively in Viz rather than relying on a heavy video clip that would drag down performance. RCS also created many detailed custom assets for YES to use in the new design, including 3D logos for every MLB and NBA team that were small enough files to not hog performance and Temo files for every team to use during the initial animations.
After navigating through the challenges of working with a brand new software version, RCS successfully delivered a complete package redesign to YES, who has been very happy with the results through the first MLB and NBA seasons of production.
Despite the hurdles of getting familiar with a new Viz version, the YES redesign was a big success and an opportunity for RCS to learn how to build within Viz 5 for future projects, opening the door to successfully work with more clients looking to upgrade versions.
