Description
“Virtual Vacay”, a mini-site of Hotels.com, with immersive augmented reality that allowed users to take a virtual tour across ten American cities. This is an older project (2009) I was a part of. In this project the team really pushed the limits of AR when nothing similar has been done before. It was done with Flash utilizing Papervision 3d for the 3d Engine. The AR part was accomplished with the help of ARToolkit library for Flash.
Hotels.com was a client of Tool of North America a Zerofractal client.
Responsibilities
- Communicate with the client daily on deliverables and setting expectations.
- Hire and manage a team of 5 artists (3 animators and 2 modelers).
- Manage the entire production process, including 3D asset creation, incorporating them in AR utilizing Flash and Papervision 3D along with ARToolkit library.
- Learn ActionScript 3.0 from scratch and develop several mini games in the site.
Challenges
- Make 3D assets look like clay.
- Animating characters to look like claymation.Learning ActionScript 3.0 from scratch.
- Incorporating all assets into a Flash website while maintaining performance of website.
Results
- Hotels.com Virtual Vacay traffic jumped 26% and bookings soared by 36%, according to then Hotels.com marketing exec Vic Walia.
- Hotels.com loyalty program also saw registration spike by 32%.
