Interactive Touchscreen
James Cameron 'Challenging the Deep' Exhibition
The Interactive touchscreen was created for the Australian Maritime Museum, as part of the larger 'Challenging The Deep' Exhibition.
The touchscreen invites the user to interact and conveys information regarding Cameron's dive to the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench.
Scrolling down guides the user through a vertical journey to the bottom of the ocean, exploding the vessel in 3d and revealing interesting facts and storyline along the way.
Installed on a 55″ 4k touch screen & running on a Gigabyte brick, the interactive runs super smoothly at 55-60fps at all times giving the user super responsive feedback.
My goal: To create a beautifully simple, guided storyline controlled by the user with one finger.
Interaction Design
By simply swiping up & down, the user drives a complex animation sequence, exploding the ship into parts and revealing snippets of the storyline as they go, with minimal input.
The screen is located in a museum and will be used by ages 5 to 95 so absolute simplicity is vital. Learning from past and existing museum interactive screen, i decided that guiding a user through a storyline makes for a much richer & enjoyable experience. They feel in control consuming the story, not just left to their own devices, poking and prodding trying to find something interesting.
A video of the final touchscreen in the museum, as it stands today
I wanted the designs to align between scientific diagram & realistic lighting and shading, running in real time.
“By simply swiping up & down, the user drives a complex animation sequence, exploding the ship into parts and revealing snippets of the storyline as they go, with minimal input.”
Created with Unity 3d, modeled in Autodesk 3ds Max, Interaction design created with After Effects
Of courses there’s quite a massive amount of work that should slot right into this section. All of the Unity development and interaction testing. Stuff that can't really be shown here.
I want to thank Agent Reality (aka Thred), developer Brendan Voltano from Blue Volcano for his countless hours & technical expertise on making my vision into a reality. Also Greg Cooper for his 3d modelling and animation.
Proof of concept
Aesthetic & Technical Considerations
Using an orthographic side view with 2d text overlays satisfied the scientific look. Unity 3d engine would take care of the rest.
A big hurdle was the massive poly count on the DSC model. Opting to run a 3d game engine in real time, limitations forced us to heavily optimise the models and textures.
Above: Original (and amazing) 3d renderings by Kollected & Nat Geo -
Used only for demonstration and reference purposes.All credits to original creators
These 3d renders were used to guide the 3d artists toward quite a stylized look
