The ask was to create a video that demonstrated Facebook’s vision for gaming in the Augmented Reality space. This video would play on a screen onstage during the keynote address.

Getting to design a game that was technically feasible (if not in actual existence yet) that would be seen by Facebook’s worldwide audience was pretty thrilling, on top of the fun we had simply exploring game types and designing little robots.

The first step of F8 Gaming was to conceptualize a fully functional game and build out the world and characters so that the video would resonate with the viewer. Once the gameplay had been established, the next step for Tendril was to take the live-action footage and integrate the 3D characters, vehicles and effects that had been created for the game.

F8 Artist was interesting because Facebook asked Tendril to ‘bring to life’ artist Heather Day’s paintings as an interactive AR experience based at Facebook’s headquarters. Facebook internally created an AR mobile app that users at the Facebook campus could install and use to see Heather’s animated artwork. The ask from Tendril was first to animate Heather’s artwork so that it painted itself onto the campus walls, and second, to make a short video of the experience using the app that would play on the F8 stage.

An exciting part of this project was that Heather created a custom piece of artwork for the app. Heather was filmed as she painted, and each layer was supplied individually to Tendril. We then took those layers and animated them onto the walls where the AR installation would be based. In order to precisely recreate the art in the actual space, we used photogrammetry of the walls to reconstruct that portion of the building in 3D for the paint to interact with.

The ask for F8 Location was to bring UI assets to life in real-world spaces and thereby demonstrate how AR could soon be used as a social communication tool. The finished video would thread together with Artist and Gaming in the F8 keynote presentation.

Tendril was excited to be helping to visualize a cool next step in the evolution of how people interact with the common—and uncommon—spaces around them.

Tendril shot Location practically in Toronto, after which our team integrated graphics and screen composites to help illustrate how the User Experience of a Location app would feel.