Whilst working for Jam Creative Studios as a freelance developer, Techniquest Science Discovery Centre tasked us with creating a virtual changing room that would allow visitors to try on different outfits from STEM careers and seasonal costumes simply by standing in front of a virtual mirror.
As a response we created a changing room using live-tracking augmented reality and depth sensing cameras to detect and imitate user movement. With simple hand gestures, visitors could browse through a catalogue and ‘try on’ a variety of costumes from different categories ranging from STEM career uniforms, Christmas characters, Halloween monsters, and even animals. The system created allowed the costumes to scale to fit visitors of all shapes and sizes, from tiny tots to tall adults.
We also developed a selfie feature that was incorporated into the HUD so that visitors could take pictures and email them to themselves via the accompanying tablet. To facilitate this, we created a web manager system which collates the images daily and stores those that have given consent for sharing through the museum’s social media feeds, while deleting the others.
We developed a content management system using Unity Asset Bundles to allow Techniquest staff to update the costumes themselves and schedule when certain costumes are made available to users through the application.
Whilst working on this project I was responsible for a majority of the client side functionality. This included:
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Implementing the live skeletal tracking system for the costume rig.
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Implementing the gesture recognition systems
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Developing a dynamic user interface that scaled and moved appropriately with the user's height.
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Developing the catalogue functionality and other various elements that interact with the content management system.
