Inspiration
As artists, the inspiration for this project came out of necessity. There are only two or three sites where artists who use 3D as a medium can showcase their pieces in augmented reality, and there is no place where artists can do this AND sell their pieces. Augmented Reality is an ideal technology to showcase the 3D medium, this combination creates augmented reality sculptures. We believe that art pushes technology forward, and technology pushes art forward. With this mantra in mind, we set out to build a playful experience that turns Miami's historic Art Deco District into a world scale gallery for avant garde three dimensional digital art.
What it does
It makes you happy.
Through AR Deco you can experience and buy contemporary artist's Augmented Reality sculptures placed around Miami's iconic Art Deco district.
Imagine you are strolling along Ocean Drive on a sunny and breezy day. As you approach the facade of a beautiful Art Deco hotel that catches your eye, you open AR Deco on your device and aim the camera at the sign of the hotel's name....suddenly a lively and colorful orb spins and floats above you, it also weaves itself freely around the hotel's architecture. You heart just skipped a bit, you feel surprised and elated...you just experienced one of Natasha Gubernov's AR pieces. You want more, so you keep strolling and scanning around, with a smile on your face. If you click in any of the pieces, you are redirected to the piece's site, where you can learn more about it and the artist, and if available buy the NFT. More smiles.
How we built it
We started by creating a number of lightship VPS ( Virtual Positioning System ) waypoints at locations we chose due to their aesthetic appeal and their ability to be enhanced with augmented art. We used the Niantic Wayfarer app to scan these areas.
We then used Blender to combine the real world scan with virtual items, including NFTs. Animation was added where necessary to enable a more powerful and noticable effect, in order to draw the viewer to interact more with the scene.
We finally brought everything together in 8th Wall, in order to enable the end user to enjoy the AR content as a no-install web-only experience using a single link or QR Code that could be scanned on-site at certain locations.
Challenges we ran into
We were not very familiar with how VPS worked, so we had to get familiar to using the Niantic Wayfarer app to scan a location. We were also able to use our private scans in the project, which meant we could release our app in a short time rather than waiting for the official ( and more detailed ) process of creating and verifying a public scan which can take a few days. We had a few issues with accuracy of origin points in the Waypoints, and accuracy of the 3d models in relation to real world objects, but this may be down to only using a few scans for private access, rather than using more scans and data for an official public verified scan.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The pieces are a joy to experience. They tell a story that would be difficult or impossible to tell without augmenting powerful digital art into the real world, and enabling users to enjoy it from different perspectives as they take their own time to walk around and interact with it,
What we learned
We were given a great tutorial by the 8th Wall team on VPS scanning which also included a great template to work from, as well as details on how to edit the project to test the integration of the art with the scan from a remote location.
What's next for AR Deco
We will add more waypoints and artist's works, develop a navigation tool that would allow users to choose a journey and visit a number of these pieces as part of an AR tour.
Built With
- 8thwall
- blender
- lightshipvps
- vps
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