National Geographic Encounter: Ocean Odyssey is a one-of-a-kind immersive experience featuring video mapping, 8K photorealistic animation, custom projection screens, immersive spatial soundscapes, interactive realtime audience tracking, and a giant dome experience. SPE Partners, the creators and producers of National Geographic Encounter, recruited an international team of Academy, Grammy, and Emmy Award-winning artists, including design firm Falcon’s Creative Group, visual effects team Pixomondo, technology integrator Kraftwerk Living Technologies, producer and composer David Kahne, and Mirada Studios.
The undersea journey begins as the sun sets above the shallows of the Solomon Islands where mammals and fish swim amongst the beautiful corals. The reef was built using photogrammetry: A team of underwater photographers shot more than 1,300 2D photos of the location, from which the team at Pixomondo constructed 3D models of the coral reef environment. “We had 150 animals, all different species, all different locations,” explains Thilo Ewers, visual effects supervisor for Pixomondo. “We built basic models, shading and texturing a sea lion more brownish, more darkish, with scars, without scars, bigger tail, smaller tail, so we could determine its character.” Everything had to be scientifically accurate and checked with numerous academic sources, including David Gruber, marine biologist, professor, and National Geographic Emerging Explorer, who served as chief science advisor for the project. Once approved, the elements were rendered into the scenery via Autodesk Maya 3D computer graphics software.
In the next room, projection screens dominate the walls and floor. A 30'x14' projection wall, comprised of custom-bent stands and sheetrock to accommodate the curve of the venue, features a 6'' radius on the bottom to ensure a smooth transition to the floor projection, resulting in a projection surface of approximately 30'x30'. Kraftwerk Living Technologies used a specialized projection paint as finish. “Once you step on the floor, little water ripples surround you, and there are some sting rays you can actually chase and they will swim away,” describes Ewers. Tracking software follows guests’ directional movements and adjusts the visible feedback on the floor accordingly. “After an interactive moment, the animation will move again to a different spot and tell a story about the animals living there, and then you come to a stopping point again where the interactive part comes back,” Ewers adds. “It takes the whole experience to a new level and lets guests interact with the story.”
The floor utilizes multiple projectors, resulting in a very small pixel size and fewer shadows of guests walking on the floor. The wall projections are created via two high-brightness 4K+ projectors using an ultra-short-throw lens to fit into the room. “The lens would be capable of filling the whole wall screen with just one projector, but to maintain high-resolution imagery and make the coral reef as realistic as possible, we decided to use two projectors,” explains Thomas Gellermann, head of research and development at Kraftwerk Living Technologies. “Now that the experience is open, when we see kids touching the screen and the corals, we can see that this was the right decision!” To ensure a smooth projection around corners, built-in mirrors and a unique backward-facing lens are used to achieve the ultra-short throw. “With the high-lumen light output of each of these projectors, this lens is unique on the market at the moment,” Gellermann adds.
On another screen, artificially intelligent sea lions react in nearly 100 different ways to dozens of specific gestures, measured via an IR-based skeleton tracking system. “The artificial intelligence was just a matter of finding balance between always doing the same thing to a gesture versus switching it up because it shouldn’t look like a trained animal,” explains Jan Fiedler, visual effects producer for Pixomondo. “Sometimes the sea lion mimics what you’re doing, and other times it doesn’t because it just doesn’t want to, so it has a little will of its own.” Pixomondo used the game engine Unity for realtime programming.
Next is an epic battle between two aggressive Humboldt squids, who fight across two facing 30'x14' screens, each projected via a high-brightness 4K+ projector using an ultra-short-throw lens. In addition to the normal PA system, six special transducer-based speakers are plastered and painted into each of the projection walls to allow for more directed sound. The scene features 20 of the 180 independent audio playback channels in David Kahne’s Ocean Odyssey soundscape, which calls for 230 loudspeakers.
Next, learn about the 3D “Bait Ball” scene, featuring over 120,000 fish during a feeding frenzy, and is one continuous four-minute shot that is 8K resolution at 60 frames per second.