AR Toy Block |

CREATED
‍Sep 2023 - Jan 2024, 16 weeks
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‍ROLE
‍Producer • 3D Art • 3d Animation • UI/UX • Website Design
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‍PROJECT MEDIUM
‍ZBrush, Houdini, Maya, Unity, Vforia, Substance Painter

ARchiToys aims to leverage Augmented Reality and 3D printing technologies to create a precise and fluent tracking experience on smartphones, which can easily integrate with other intellectual properties (IPs).

In this experience, players will use their phones to interact with miniature characters in various themed blocks and personalize the virtual environment.Project Weekly Blog Website: https://projects.etc.cmu.edu/architoys/

Model Creation: 3D Printing and Digital Modules

Users can plug in modules onto the platforms on the tree. The tree has hardware that can detect new modules that are plugged in.

Dragon Module

Mushroom Module

Trampoline module

Model Creation: 3D Printing and Digital Tree

To achieve the highest quality of augmented reality, keeping the digital and physical objects perfectly the same is the key. That's why we chose 3D printing.

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2. Remesh to Create Low Poly model in Maya

Because the game engine can't handle multimillion poly models, we need to reduce the poly face count to < 5000, while 3D printing needs high poly count to achieve details.

3. Substance Painter: Projecting the high-poly model onto the low-poly model for textures.

4. Houdini: Calculate and Slice the Tree to fit in the 3D Printer's Size Constraint
The tree Size is 60 centimeters and was cut into 26 pieces.

5. Design Platforms and Tubes inside the Tree for Hardware to Fit in

6. 3d Printing Progress

1. Sculpting Tree Model in Zbrush.

3D Printing Base Tree Pipeline:
Zbrush High-Poly Modeling > Remesh to create low-poly model in Maya > Slice the model into 26 pieces Houdini > Modeling tubes inside the tree (For hardware) in Maya > Send to Printer > Glue Pieces Together

Digital Asset Pipeline:
Zbrush High-Poly Modeling > Remesh to create the low-poly model in Maya > Substance Painter: projecting the high-poly model onto the low-poly model for textures.

Reward Assets Creation

Hard surface modeling:
The mobile phone, as an AR platform, is not powerful enough. Therefore, we need to optimize running by using the minimum poly count to maximize efficiency. This means that the face count of our other assets on the left and right is less than 500 polycounts.