Over the last two years I've developed and conceptualized ideas for Microsoft's HoloLens with the team at BigPark. This project showcases the HoloLens and aspirations for the HoloLens.
We wanted to create a video of how we could use HoloLens in the future for high level presentation creation.
Our talented team nailed down our production pipeline from live action walk throughs, 3D asset generation to implementation. We had to be very specific for shooting around technical conditions. We also made sure that this scenario was true to technology and the system we created worked in a real world scenario.
We explored different features and the flexibility of how you could work with the HoloLens with subtle gestures. The gesturing had to be elegant and easy without taking away from the main functionality of the menu. We developed tools and functions that were surrounded around the simplicity of use. It was functional yet aesthetically pleasing. Sometimes there is feature creep with what you are trying to create but we kept it lean. When we make a presentation we want it to be quick and be able to apply changes easily. As a user we don’t think about how easy the software is to use to create these presentations. That’s what we wanted to mimic — something that worked and was simple.
Shooting this project and making sure we captured everything each team wanted to focus on, from UX to design to art, was a challenge. I spent countless hours with project managers, producers and team leads to manage expectations. After I was able to understand what everyone wanted to showcase and present, I was responsible for strategizing how to bring this to fruition. My biggest challenge was that I couldn’t see the holograms. I worked with our in-house tech expert to identify the needs to see the picture and holograms separately and together. The only problem was a 2-second delay. This was a technical limitation we had to work with as we progressed through the project.
Our rig was composed of:
Epic RED Dragon
HoloLens
Jib
Dolly
Monitor
This was my first time shooting holograms. I was excited for the opportunity and I wanted to get epic cinematic shots of our holograms.
I had a couple of problems I had to solve first.
How do I move the camera in ways that speaks to the motion of the holograms in a confined space?
What was the fastest way to move the rig around and recreate shots?
What was the most precise way I could move around holograms so they wouldn’t distort because of hardware memory restrictions?
Thankfully we had a talented team of tech specialists that I could work with. I peppered them with questions and we had conversations until we came to an understanding. There were many limitations with the technology at the stage that it was at and I had to be creative with my approaches and solutions.
This was an amazing project to be a part of after a year of developing, connecting and prototyping for the HoloLens. I was able to get a better understanding of the visual pipeline from sketch to the implementation of assets and technical requirements to run our holograms. The pre-production process helped us understand the needs and goals of each team early on in the process. This gave us more time to focus on technical issues.
The teams were large, the goals were audacious, and the pace was fast. But it was a pleasure funnelling all of the elements into a single visual piece. My biggest takeaway was how our presenters picked up and used our app and features to create presentation elements. There was minimal instruction on the user interface gesturing and during the project they became very proficient, they were living the dream… Well our dream and aspirations of what this could become.