wet n wild
About wet n wild
The work made for wet n wild runs to 1 verified project since 2019 — mostly AugmentedReality, VirtualReality and GenZ.
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Underwater VR Midnight Mermaid
Dive into the world of mermaids at nightfall with Wet n Wild®’s new Midnight Mermaid virtual reality experience. Enjoy the thrills and entertainment of a 3D underwater journey featuring sea life, mermaids, and makeup! Groove Jones worked with Wet n Wild® to bring their latest brand concept to life by creating an underwater VR experience. The Midnight Mermaid collection is inspired by the world of mermaids in a context that you rarely get to see or experience: Nightfall. The client’s goal, as a brand, was to create an experience that is visually arresting, breaks through, and ultimately resonates with the viewers – VR has the potential to do all of that. “Creating a compelling experience for our Gen Z and Millennial consumer is key. They’re bombarded with different kinds of media and can have a short attention span, but we know that they are willing to experience a brand’s content if that content is compelling.” – Evelyn Wang, SVP Marketing Markwins Beauty Brands Global Gen Z and Millennials The brand’s core consumers are Gen Z and Millennials, and as a result, Groove Jones need to understand how these audiences behave/what they want. For this consumer, it is all about building meaningful connections. Their attention span is a lot shorter, so they have to engage with them in a way that will make them want to take the time to explore a relationship with the Wet n Wild brand. The experience launched at Beautycon in Los Angeles, where Gen Z and Millennials loved the experience. The experience created a closer connection with their consumer and an opportunity for a more powerful brand recall. It was more than a promotional tool. It is an extension of the brand where the millennial consumer is propelled at the center of their world, fully engaged with it and the products. “Our goal was to create something visually arresting that would break through and resonate, gaining the heart and imagination of our consumer. With VR we’re able to create a closer connection with our consumer while creating an opportunity for more powerful brand recall.” – Evelyn Wang, SVP Marketing Markwins Beauty Brands Global The experience has now been released as a mobile App and across Wet n’ Wild’s social media platforms that play 360 videos. Behind the Scenes – Making the VR Experience The production began with the outline of a script and storyboards that told the mermaid story. Groove Jones had to consider the entire 360º area and design the experience so a viewer could see the story from different angles and that the various elements of the story connect. The team then worked on creating the characters in the story – the queen, the guards, and the mermaids. Finally, Groove Jones began the casting call for the characters in the story. Each model needed to represent the brand and have a strong screen presence to sell the idea that they were the mermaids. Scanning in the On-Camera Talent The models were scanned in from every angle to capture their entire bodies. Groove Jones used the process of photogrammetry to combine image data from every angle into a super high-resolution digital double. The mobile rig contains about 130 DSLR cameras, all precisely calibrated to capture each critical area of geometry Groove Jones need. Using a full surround camera array allows them to instantly capture all the geometry and texture information they need, so the talent does not have to hold perfectly still for seconds or minutes, like with other scanning methods. Each instantaneous capture yields around three gigapixels of surround data. In a few minutes, Groove Jones captured between 500 and 1000 images for each mermaid in this project. From there, the images were all combined to create a high-quality 3D model. Shooting the Commercial It was a challenging production to create a magical 360° underwater world full of 3D CGI animated sea creatures combined with live-action footage of real people. The live-action component was shot on a large green screen stage. Each actor was carefully rigged and suspended to create the effect of the talent swimming underwater or being suspended in water. Groove Jones ECD & Director Dale Carman took his time helping each actor become comfortable suspended in the rigging, gauging their ability to direct their performance accordingly. The rigging aspect was a challenge. Groove Jones had to carefully strike a balance between enough rigging and support to effectively suspend each actor without their bodies being completely covered with various harnesses. Since the final piece was to be a 360° VR experience, they had to capture each shot since, for each performance carefully, you would see the actor’s entire body in 360°. The models were hung from the ceiling to create the effect of swimming underwater. Plates were shot with an Arri Alexa stereo rig. Talents were moved to replace the actor’s legs with animated tails and built a complete computer-generated underwater world. You are immersed in an ocean; sea life and mermaids are intertwined. Unlike traditional 2D compositing, where elements are just in front of or behind one another for viewing on a 2D bordered, flat screen, Groove Jones's final view is stereoscopic and in 360°. A complex compositing pipeline using the actual 3D position of each pixel and combining the various 2D and 3D elements perfectly was developed by Groove Jones. Once completed, Groove Jones's underwater world was filled with an abundance of 3D CGI sea creatures moving all around you, the viewer, and the merpeople. The 3D CGI sea creatures were modeled, textured, rigged, and animated in Maya. Everything was then integrated and composited in their Nuke VR pipeline to create the final stereoscopic 360º experience. Credits: Groove Jones https://www.groovejones.com/work_vr_ar_360_experiential-2/