Virtual Production and B2B Events: The Smurf Summit at the Heart of the Smurf Village with Dreamwall

Every year, the Smurf Summit remotely brings together the international partners and clients of The Peyo Company. The objective of this annual meeting is to share brand news, future product launches, and strategic developments surrounding the franchise. For the recent edition, The Peyo Company wanted to revamp the format of this global address by immersing the speakers directly into the heart of the 3D Smurf village.

To design and produce this audiovisual service, The Peyo Company relied on the expertise of Dreamwall's Media Solutions department. This collaboration follows a long-standing partnership established over several years in the 2D and 3D animation sector.

Moving Beyond the Traditional Video Conference Format

Corporate presentations aimed at a remote audience generally rely on slide decks shared during online meetings. While functional, this format often limits the visual impact and the participants' level of engagement.

For the Smurf Summit, the challenge was to offer a captivating audiovisual setup for teams connected via Microsoft Teams from multiple continents. Integrating the presenters into original 3D environments transforms a simple informational meeting into a structured visual narrative. The set is no longer just a passive background: it becomes an image vector and a natural common thread between the various presentations.

The Strategic Reuse of 3D Assets

One of the major assets of this project lies in leveraging existing digital resources. The 3D environments initially modeled for the animated television series were adapted for real-time use in a corporate event context.

This bridge between animation production and corporate communication offers a twofold benefit:

• Optimization of creation costs: reusing and rearranging existing 3D assets avoids having to model completely new environments.

• Absolute visual fidelity: speakers operate within a setting that strictly conforms to the brand's official aesthetic and graphic guidelines.

Environment Optimization and Unreal Engine Integration

To move from the initial concept to on-set realization, a rigorous technical preparation and engineering phase was essential. Technical feasibility and adherence to budget constraints require pragmatic production choices.

The teams from Dreamwall and The Peyo Company selected the most relevant 3D environments for the presentation's flow. These sets were then optimized for the Unreal Engine real-time rendering engine. This adaptation work guarantees rendering fluidity, virtual lighting precision, and the responsiveness of the camera tracking system during capture.

A One-Day Green Screen Shoot in Our Studios

The recording took place over a single day in Dreamwall's shooting studios located in Charleroi. The organization of such a shoot relies on a well-established methodology:

• Camera and tracking calibration: perfect alignment of the physical camera's movements with the virtual camera in Unreal Engine.
• Lighting harmonization: exact matching between the real green screen stage lighting and the 3D environment's virtual lighting to ensure credible compositing.
• Real-time compositing and rendering: direct visualization of the final result on the control monitors, allowing speakers to position themselves accurately within the virtual space.

This operational rigor reduces the time executives need to be on-set and ensures a smooth delivery of the finalized content.

Why Adopt the Virtual Studio for Your Strategic Meetings?

Virtual studio production is not solely for high-budget film productions or television programs. It represents a concrete and operational solution for modernizing internal and external corporate communication.

The benefits observed in event formats like the Smurf Summit include:

• Enhanced visual impact: increased attention capture from employees, clients, or partners during remote meetings.

• Total scenographic flexibility: the ability to transition from an industrial environment to a product platform or institutional space without building physical sets.

• Logistics control: limiting team travel and eliminating the storage constraints of physical sets.

• Tailored scalability: adapting technical setups according to real objectives and allocated budgets.

Every virtual communication project requires a tailored approach. Whether for an annual convention, a press conference, a product launch, or a partner summit, Dreamwall adapts its technical setup to the client's specific needs.

The Media Solutions team is involved at every stage of production:

• Technical and creative scoping: defining the format, and selecting the 3D elements to be produced or adapted.

• Technical preparation: optimizing resources, programming in Unreal Engine, and rehearsals.

• Shooting and capture: providing studio stages, managing the virtual control room, and delivering video masters.