Fantastic Beasts and Magic Leap

A unique film trailer experience using the Magic Leap One Headset

Framestore is proud to present its second project utilising the Magic Leap One mixed reality headset. The project showcases the capabilities of the headset while also promoting Warner Bros. film Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, the follow up film to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Challenges

  • Learning how to write an application for the Magic Leap AR Headset
  • Setting up the calibration phase to make it easier for first-time users
  • Creating an intuitive virtual marker placement system to easily change required image tracking target position

Technologies

  • Unreal Engine 4
  • Visual Studio
  • Perforce

Languages

  • C++
  • Blueprints

Project Details

The piece delivers a unique film trailer experience. Designed to take place in front of a wall with a table up against it, the experience begins when a viewer puts on a Magic Leap One headset and waves a wand to reveal a host of magical objects and books on the table – and also a cinema screen projected perfectly on to the facing wall. The Niffler, a magical creature which Framestore originally designed and animated for the first film in the series, then emerges from the screen, jumps down on to the table and, snaffling a sparkling jewel on the way, scurries over various objects, to climb up on a pile of dusty books and sit and enjoy the film trailer (especially a brief moment of his own performance) before then climbing back into the screen and onto the 3D film titles.

This project is a great example of how Framestore is increasingly leveraging its expertise across platforms to deliver rich movie-related experiences for users beyond cinemas and TV screens:

‘[In projects like this] we are integrating film assets and some film techniques – such as pre-rendering animated character sequences – which enables us to create much more impressive experiences than if these characters were being rendered using traditional real time techniques in mobile hardware,’ says Webber.

The experience will be available from Friday 14th December 2018 to visitors of the AT&T flagship store on North Michigan Avenue in Chicago – where there is also an exhibition of some of the film props and costumes worn by the principal characters in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.

Images

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