Leica BLK
for
Entertainment
LiDAR. Camera. Action.
LiDAR Designed for Media & Entertainment Workflows
Leica Geosystems’ award-winning laser scanning technology digitally capture 3D data of sets, stages, and locations exactly when you need it — even between takes. Speed up production, cut costs, reduce errors, and integrate the precision of LiDAR into your workflow. For any workflow that requires 3D data, we help you create stellar stories that shine in the spotlight.
Capture Reality.Craft Your Vision.
Capture Reality.
Craft Your Vision.
Scan a set, a stage, a stadium, or even a city.
Environment Building
Make locations more realistic than ever by using scan geometry as a base for worldbuilding. Geometry from a LiDAR scanner is true scale and extremely accurate. Worldbuilders can import the geometry into any 3D modeling software and convert the scan data into clean geometry optimized for texture and lighting.
Camera Tracking
Make tracking impossible shots possible and difficult shots fast and easy. Walk away from every shot knowing that generating the accurate camera track will be possible when paired with scanned geometry from the set. Scanning sets with limited trackable features provides tracking software with spatial information that makes tracking quick and easy, reducing manual work and making compositing CGI elements and set extensions seamless.
Pre-Visualization
Create spatially accurate digital mockups of scenes weeks before going to set. Save valuable time and realize mistakes early. The previs team can use geometry from a stage or set to plan camera moves, rigging, stunts and interactions between CGI elements and the physical set, allowing the director to realize the vision and understand roadblocks or limitations long before setting foot on stage.
Production & Set Planning
By scanning real-world locations and creating accurate 3D digital twins, filmmakers can rebuild environments indoors on soundstages, saving time and money while allowing for modifications and precise lighting control. This world capture and digitization collects every detail, providing builders and location scouts with comprehensive 3D geometry that goes beyond photos, ensuring that all logistical elements like space, power, and backstage areas are accurately represented for off-site shoots.
Immersive Experiences
Scan large environments for spatial mapping to unlock a range of possibilities, from creating intricate projection mapping installations that transform physical spaces into dynamic displays to developing 3D spatial anchor maps that enable expansive AR immersive experiences and live events. These scans ensure accurate, detailed representations of large-scale areas, allowing digital content to seamlessly interact with the real world, whether for artistic installations, interactive exhibits, or immersive storytelling. By capturing the environment in high detail, these spatial maps provide the foundation for innovative experiences that engage and captivate audiences in entirely new ways.
Environment Building
Make locations more realistic than ever by using scan geometry as a base for worldbuilding. Geometry from a LiDAR scanner is true scale and extremely accurate. Worldbuilders can import the geometry into any 3D modeling software and convert the scan data into clean geometry optimized for texture and lighting.
Camera Tracking
Make tracking impossible shots possible and difficult shots fast and easy. Walk away from every shot knowing that generating the accurate camera track will be possible when paired with scanned geometry from the set. Scanning sets with limited trackable features provides tracking software with spatial information that makes tracking quick and easy, reducing manual work and making compositing CGI elements and set extensions seamless.
Pre-Visualization
Create spatially accurate digital mockups of scenes weeks before going to set. Save valuable time and realize mistakes early. The previs team can use geometry from a stage or set to plan camera moves, rigging, stunts and interactions between CGI elements and the physical set, allowing the director to realize the vision and understand roadblocks or limitations long before setting foot on stage.
Production & Set Planning
By scanning real-world locations and creating accurate 3D digital twins, filmmakers can rebuild environments indoors on soundstages, saving time and money while allowing for modifications and precise lighting control. This world capture and digitization collects every detail, providing builders and location scouts with comprehensive 3D geometry that goes beyond photos, ensuring that all logistical elements like space, power, and backstage areas are accurately represented for off-site shoots.
Immersive Experiences
Scan large environments for spatial mapping to unlock a range of possibilities, from creating intricate projection mapping installations that transform physical spaces into dynamic displays to developing 3D spatial anchor maps that enable expansive AR immersive experiences and live events. These scans ensure accurate, detailed representations of large-scale areas, allowing digital content to seamlessly interact with the real world, whether for artistic installations, interactive exhibits, or immersive storytelling. By capturing the environment in high detail, these spatial maps provide the foundation for innovative experiences that engage and captivate audiences in entirely new ways.
Featured Use Case
Marion Spates, VFX Supervisor for Avatar: The Last Airbender, Uses LiDAR to Fuel Creativity
Learn how VFX supervisor Marion Spates employed cutting-edge technologies including LiDAR to help achieve his creative vision on Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, and watch our showreel demonstrating how Leica Geosystems scanners enhance traditional VFX workflows.
SCANNERS
Leica BLK360
When you need speed but can’t sacrifice results, the Leica BLK360 is the perfect scanner for your production kit. Our fastest, smallest, and lightest static laser scanner has a rapid capture speed of as little as 20 seconds for a complete scan that delivers accuracy while boosting efficiency. It’s also quiet on set, unobtrusive, and easy to use with one-button operation.
Lightning-fast data capture that doesn’t slow down production
VIS automated scan alignment system for easy scan registration in the office
4-camera, 13 MP, 5-bracket HDR imaging for challenging lighting conditions
View Tech Specs
“I had previously written off LiDAR as a tool not applicable to the quick pace of live-action shooting. You could get incredible results, but the gear was big, expensive, and time-consuming. The BLK has disrupted this assumption, and I'll never be on set without it.”
— Casey Schatz, Head of Virtual Production, The Third Floor.
Leica RTC360
When a production demands extreme detail, high-resolution data, and longer range, the Leica RTC360 delivers. The laser scanner captures up to 2 million points per second, creating dense point clouds of detail-rich environments that easily produce high-quality meshes. The RTC360 captures everything you need, leaving no detail behind.
Intuitive controls and advanced HDR imaging enable the RTC360 to create colorized point clouds in under two minutes
Immediately view captured data and plan next scanner setup thanks to the automated alignment visual inertia system (VIS) technology
Designed for maximum productivity, the RTC360 is small enough to fit in a backpack
Capture, register and examine data on-site via the Leica Cyclone FIELD 360 app
View Tech Specs
“We normally don’t have enough time on real sets for acquisitions, and we have to consider the condition of the filming location, which can pose problems. However, thanks to the RTC360, we avoid risks in the field. VIS processing … allows the scanning process at filming locations to be done quickly with great precision and simple usability. It proves a great help in our VFX work.”
— Cholho Shin, CEO, 75mm
Leica BLK2GO
Need to skip the tripod and get in and out fast? The Leica BLK2GO offers the quickest, easiest, and most portable way to scan a building, structure, set, or other environment. It is a handheld laser scanner that continuously captures colorized 3D point clouds while you carry it. Simply pick it up, turn it on, and walk through the space you need to capture.
Get in and out fast and capture spaces in one walk without a tripod setup
Easy one-handed operation and single-button push-to-scan
Real-time visual data monitoring to ensure you capture everything you need via BLK Live app
View Tech Specs
“The BLK2GO is another leap forward that is going to enable us to scan sets, props, vehicles in ways that we’ve never been able to before. It’s really an amazing time to be interacting with some of these devices.”
— Francois Chardavoine, Chief Technology Officer, Industrial Light and Magic
Made for Your Existing Workflow
Put 3D LiDAR data in any software you use and bring it to life in virtual production, LED projections, VFX, augmented reality, or whatever you can dream of. Whether you’re creating virtual stages or doing camera tracking for previs, our scanners give you the data you need to take the next leap forward in your work.
RAVE REVIEWS
“You want your LiDAR scanning technology to be as portable and as easy-to-operate as possible so that you always have the data available. … The BLK360 has become a standard part of arsenal that our crews can just throw in their backpack and go on location whenever needed.”
— Francois Chardavoine, Chief Technology Officer, Industrial Light and Magic
“The more I scan, the less potential for human error.”
— Casey Schatz, Head of Virtual Production, The Third Floor.
“What's great about laser scanning with LiDAR data is that it lets us virtually scout any scanned area and determine exactly where to shoot. Before building our SCAPES in Unreal Engine, we can view the point cloud and previsualize the shot. Then, our finished digital scene of the environment lets directors and cinematographers previsualize shots and scout angles in a hyper-realistic space."
Erick Geisler, Chief Technology Officer, Global Objects
Who we work with
Laser scanning in action
How Laser Scanning Works in Virtual Production
See how the world’s leading visualization studio, The Third Floor, makes Leica Geosystems reality capture technology a key part of the virtual production process.
Virtual Production Playbook: An 8-Part Netflix Series
LiDAR is changing the game in virtual production. Learn about some of the most popular techniques and technologies used to scan environments (i.e. “world capture”), stages, and more, including a cameo from the RTC360.
Leica Geosystems at SMPTE: How to Use 3D Laser Scanning in Film Production
Leica Geosystems' Jamie Featherston and Henry Mountain walk attendees of the SMPTE Media Technology Summit through how LiDAR scanners are transforming film production workflows. Watch it here.
Use Cases
Marion Spates, VFX Supervisor for Avatar: The Last Airbender, Uses LiDAR to Fuel Creativity
Visual effects (VFX) have long seemed like magic to film and TV audiences—at their finest, they go unnoticed as “effects,” effortlessly blending with real-world elements
How LiDAR Data Supports Workflows for Immersive Live Events
Imagine being at a concert and during your favorite song, LED lights rain down from the rigging above the stage in a perfect geometric display that lines up exactly with the stage. Or watching one online—say, a DJ Snake concert at Coachella—and seeing incredible AR graphics that burst out from the screen and seem as if they’re part of the festival itself. It’s all part of the show, but how does it work?
Lux Machina and the Leica RTC360 Provide 3D Data for Flying Augmented Reality Animations at Coachella
Coachella. The massive, famous American desert music festival, with 250,000 attendees in 2024, is one of the largest music festivals in the world. Stages, concertgoers, artists and their entourages, vehicles, tents, crew, and so much more fill the lively festival grounds for three days of showstopping performances.
EVENTS
Come meet us at these upcoming trade shows and events
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LDI ExpoDecember 8 - 10
LDI is the catalyst that connects the entire live entertainment, design, and technology community with manufacturers of state-of-the-art gear, and professional training from industry leaders. -
Laser Scanning in Media & EntertainmentWatch our latest on-demand workshop with Andy Cochrane, interactive and immersive content creator, and Henry Mountain, technologist at Leica Geosystems, to learn more about laser scanning in media and entertainment. With practical uses ranging from virtual production to VFX and so much more, you’ll learn the benefits, features, and innovations that LiDAR delivers to M&E workflows.