It’s Virtually Christmas – Anders Kristoffersen

Personal project

It's Virtually Christmas

Santa’s VR presents are coming to town

Background

’It’s virtually Christmas’ was an experimental Christmas-themed tech exhibition created at SapientRazorfish. We had been tinkering a bit with virtual reality based 3D painting tools like Google Tilt Brush and Kodon.

While they’re both really fun tools, they’re very much a closed off, one-person experience behind a VR headset. We wanted to find a way to open the world of VR to the rest of the agency.

How Google Tilt Brush works

What we did

We asked some people from the studio to draw some amazing Christmas presents in virtual reality. The finished 3D models were shared by an augmented reality app that allowed you to have a “sneak peek” at some special presents that we placed under our studio Christmas tree.

The process

The basic idea is that your phone’s camera recognises a marker, much like a QR code, and overlays a graphic on top of that. We created some custom-made wrapping paper to act as our marker. (In agency brand colours of course)

To display the different models, each wrapping paper had to be different. Additionally, all six sides of the presents had to be unique to create the orientation needed to display the 3D model from any angle. A simple looping pattern wouldn’t work as it would just recognise the same thing over and over.

We created a series of dynamic Christmas patterns that were turned into wrapping paper. Once the paper was wrapped around the present, each side was scanned and mapped back to a virtual cube to ensure the orientation of the 3D models would always match the present, whichever way you turned it.

To display the different models, each wrapping paper had to be different. Additionally, all six sides of the presents had to be unique to create the orientation needed to display the 3D model from any angle. A simple looping pattern wouldn’t work as it would just recognise the same thing over and over.

We created a series of dynamic Christmas patterns that were turned into wrapping paper. Once the paper was wrapped around the present, each side was scanned and mapped back to a virtual cube to ensure the orientation of the 3D models would always match the present, whichever way you turned it.

To display the different models, each wrapping paper had to be different. Additionally, all six sides of the presents had to be unique to create the orientation needed to display the 3D model from any angle. A simple looping pattern wouldn’t work as it would just recognise the same thing over and over.

We created a series of dynamic Christmas patterns that were turned into wrapping paper. Once the paper was wrapped around the present, each side was scanned and mapped back to a virtual cube to ensure the orientation of the 3D models would always match the present, whichever way you turned it.

To display the different models, each wrapping paper had to be different. Additionally, all six sides of the presents had to be unique to create the orientation needed to display the 3D model from any angle. A simple looping pattern wouldn’t work as it would just recognise the same thing over and over.

We created a series of dynamic Christmas patterns that were turned into wrapping paper. Once the paper was wrapped around the present, each side was scanned and mapped back to a virtual cube to ensure the orientation of the 3D models would always match the present, whichever way you turned it.

The Augmented reality app in action

3D print of a VR drawing... So futuristic

The outcome

We loaded the app on a number of devices and put them in the hands of our colleagues to go explore the presents. I think we managed to bring back some of that childhood excitement of wondering “what’s inside?”

app’y christmas ;-)