The pipeline
From real ground to a working set in three moves.
Scan
We LiDAR-scan your location — a canyon, a warehouse, a city block — capturing true geometry down to the centimetre. What you scout is exactly what you get.
SUB-CM ACCURACY
INT / EXT / AERIAL
Rebuild
The scan becomes a real-time environment in Unreal Engine 5 — sun-accurate lighting, set dressing, and physically correct scale you can walk through.
GEO-ACCURATE SUN & SKY
VIRTUAL ART DEPARTMENT
Previs
Block scenes with a virtual camera built on real lens math — actual focal lengths, sensor sizes and anamorphic squeeze. Every frame you design is a frame you can achieve on the day.
VIRTUAL CAMERA / VCAM
SHOT LISTS + TECHVIS OUT
Why it works
Built by an Architect and a working DP, not a game studio.
Most previs looks like a video game because it's made like one. ÆPEX is run by a cinematographer and an architect... One brings credits across from BBC, Sky, PBS, Netflix and Amazon, the other brings award-winning built work and Unreal Engine experience from the first internationally recognised Romanian VR project. The virtual camera behaves like a real one because it's built inside environments designed by people who think in structural logic.
The result isn't a cartoon of your film. It's a technical rehearsal — one you can share with your AD, gaffer, stunt team and financiers.
DIRDirectors
Find the shot in the scan, not on the clock. Try ten versions of a scene before committing to one.
DPCinematographers
Test focal lengths, camera heights and sun position against real geometry. Walk on set already knowing the frame.
PRODProducers
Fewer setups burned, fewer company moves, no surprises on the day. Previs pays for itself in the first schedule revision.
VFXVFX & Stunts
Hand off scan-accurate techvis so plates, rigs and safety plans are built on the same geometry you'll shoot.
The founders
Designing spaces for stories to happen.
Horia Spirescu
Co-founder — Bucharest
Award-winning architect and founder of Studio ACT, working at the intersection of architecture, science and the public sphere. His built work has been recognised at the Bucharest Architecture Annual, including the Avrămeni 9 residential complex.
Horia was level designer and co-producer on Tangible Utopias, the Unreal-built VR franchise that won the Open Frame Award at goEast 2021 — the first internationally awarded Romanian VR project. He brings real-world structural logic to every virtual environment ÆPEX builds.
OPEN FRAME AWARD — GOEAST 2021
ANUALA BUCUREȘTI — AVRĂMENI 9
Sebastian Cort
Co-founder — Los Angeles
Cinematographer with international credits across BBC, Sky, PBS and Amazon, spanning narrative features, documentary and music film — including Blur: To the End and Liam Gallagher: Knebworth 22. His latest feature, Three Years Gone, premiered at LALIFF 2026 at the TCL Chinese Theatres.
Sebastian builds ÆPEX previs the way he builds a shoot day: around the frame the director actually needs, with lens math a camera department can trust.
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY — THE SPIN
BEST SA FILM, DURBAN IFF — SONS OF THE SEA
Cost & planning
The cheapest day of your shoot is the one in the engine.
A shoot day burns crew, kit, locations and light whether or not the plan works. A previs day costs a fraction of that — and every decision made in the engine is one you don't pay to make on set.
Because the environment is scan-accurate, the previs isn't a sketch — it's a pre-plan the whole production can execute against: shot lists, techvis diagrams, sun paths and rigging positions, all pulled from the same geometry.
Blocking is solved before the crew arrives, so the day is spent shooting — not deciding.
Test whether that second location earns its move — inside the scan, before it's on the schedule.
Prove the shot needs the 50ft Technocrane before you book it — or find the frame that doesn't.
Sun-accurate lighting and true lens math mean the day rarely surprises you.
A watchable previs cut is the strongest schedule-and-budget argument a production can make.
Contact
Your location, scanned. Your film, rehearsed.
Tell us about the project — script stage or fully greenlit. We'll come back with a scan plan and a previs scope within 48 hours.