tuwhiri: stories of the manukau harbour AR experience
Employer: ARA Journeys | Base Illustrations: Phil James
Tools: Unity, Shadergraph, Photoshop, Procreate, Lightship, C#
Release Date: June 2022
Categories: Tech Art, Animation, Illustration
ARA Journeys wanted to create an Augmented Reality chapter based on the existing story trailer.
Learned how to use and write custom code for Lightship ARDK.
Storyboarded the AR experience based on existing audio narration.
Dissected existing flat painting into separate components suitable for real-time spatial animation, and animated them using Unity’s Animation tools and Shadergraph.
Painted additional textures where suitable textures could not be extracted from base imagery.
Using Lightship example code as a base, programmed the entire AR experience and the in-game UI flow to access it.
AR Experience storyboard
Glowing belt of the taniwha appears beneath the water's surface. Water created as custom shader to match style.
Achieved taniwha breach effect using layered sprites with custom shader on waves
Overview of custom shader made for horizontal water plane
Overview of custom shader made for wave sprite animation