Fineco Bank Virtual Production

What It Is

A complete virtual production workflow built at TraderTV.LIVE for Fineco Bank — 40 instructional videos about market fundamentals, produced in a real-time 3D environment. Hosts were keyed into a custom virtual studio modeled in Blender, rendered in Unreal Engine, composited through Aximmetry, and switched live on a Blackmagic ATEM Constellation 4 M/E. Delivered in both English and Italian.

Why It Was Interesting

Neither myself nor my colleague had ever done virtual production. We had green screen experience with static keyed backgrounds, but nothing with real-time 3D environments or game engine compositing. We learned Unreal Engine, Aximmetry, and Blender on the job — while still running a daily live broadcast every morning.

The Setup

The studio wasn’t built for virtual production. We had three pedestal-mounted Blackmagic Studio Cameras, a green-wrapped host desk with a retractable green curtain, and no camera tracking system. Every virtual camera angle had to be locked off and matched to a physical camera position by hand. Floor tape, measured heights, precise tilts. If anything shifted, the composite broke.

A single Aximmetry program output fed back into the ATEM via a Blackmagic DeckLink card. Bitfocus Companion handled virtual camera moves inside Aximmetry, while ATEM macros managed SuperSource layouts. Every transition was choreographed between the two — Companion triggering virtual camera presets, the ATEM switching compositions, and the timing between them hiding the seams.

The Virtual Studio

I modeled the full 3D studio in Blender and brought it into Unreal Engine as the real-time rendering environment. The physical host desk was keyed out and replaced with a 3D desk featuring reflective surfaces and real-time host reflections. TV screens inside the virtual set could display live SDI feeds or static images. Virtual camera presets and animated moves were built in Aximmetry’s node graph.

Post-Production

Each video needed a custom intro, outro, and subtitles — delivered twice (English and Italian). We built an After Effects template system for titles and used automated SRT generation for subtitles. Audio sync correction was handled in post due to PCIe-related A/V drift on the rendering PC. The final 80 renders were distributed across a makeshift render farm using office PCs to hit the deadline.

Tech Stack

• 3D Modeling: Blender
• Real-Time Rendering: Unreal Engine
• Compositing: Aximmetry (node-based, real-time)
• Switching: Blackmagic ATEM Constellation 4 M/E
• Automation: Bitfocus Companion (virtual camera triggers, ATEM macro execution)
• Capture: Blackmagic DeckLink PCIe, SDI
• Post-Production: After Effects (templates, subtitles, render farm)

Gallery

Behind-the-scenes footage and Companion setup screenshots available in the related journal entry.