Wizards take Flight - Chaos at Hogwarts

Wizards take Flight and Chaos at Hogwarts

Exclusively at Harry Potter Store in New York City

Wizards take Flight and Chaos at Hogwarts are two state of the art Location Based VR Experiences that take audiences inside the Wizarding World of Harry potter to experience the magic themselves. They are exclusively located in the NYC Harry Potter flagship store and tickets can be acquired in advance here.

Wevr is proud to have collaborated with The Blair Partnership and Warner Brothers as a creative partner to bring these two experiences to life and push the limits of virtual reality entertainment.

This collaboration includes creative development, interactive storytelling system design, and development and production of art, animation and interactive systems, exclusively directed and developed by Wevr.

Production Highlights

Art and Animation

Character Visual Development and 3D Character design were inspired by the original Harry Potter films and descriptions in the J. K. Rowling’s books. The Character Art team used a combination of Zbrush, Substance Designer and Maya to model and rig each character, and Marvelous Designer in combination with the Unreal Engine Cloth Sim to produce the wardrobe simulations every time a character is wearing clothes.

The animation team used a mix of real-time mocap and keyframed animation in a virtual production setting using Xsense and Rococo mocap suits in real time with Unreal Engine Livelink systems to capture full body human performances in combination with keyframe animated fantasy creatures. Human facial animation was keyframed on top if iOS ARkit facial motion capture with Unreal Engine Livelink.

Our technical animation team developed a blueprint-based interactive character animation system based on player behavior and gaze triggers to drive unique story experiences for every player. Charaters will appear to address every player directly at different times in the experience, and unique events would be triggered based un players distribution and actions within a scene. This truly delivers a unique story-experience where details are unique every time within a predetermined sequence of story events.

Environments and Props were also produced inspired by the visual lore established in the Harry Potter films. Extensive research trips were taken to Leavesden Studios in Great Britain, where data was collected on the interiors and exteriors of Hogwarts Castle, as well as detailed set dressing and props breakdowns. The films provided a blueprint for all magic and other visual effects, and everything that is not shown in the films was inspired by descriptions in J. K. Rowling’s books, and produced to fit the already visualized material from the films.

In addition to this, the Art Department team produced a Digital Twin in Unreal Engine for London the area surrounding River Thames from around Houses of Parliament and Big Ben to Tower Bridge. Here again, references from the films were used, especially quoting visual elements from Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Production Design, Art Direction, Visual Development and 3D Asset Production required the use of every 3D creation tool imaginable, from Houdini and Unreal Engine to simulate climate effects like a massive thunderstorm over London, to Zbrush, Substance Designer, Maya and Unreal Engine to craft in full detail every element in the Wizarding World.

Development Highlights

Interactive Systems

Wevr Creative and Technical teams were responsible for hardware design and software implementation of the physical user experience. This includes a novel and fully interactive Broom Flight Simulation with physical effects triggered by story sequence events. During creative development, Wevr created several iterations of handmade broom prototypes, as well as tracking and force feedback systems.

Several exciting interactive features were conceived, developed and implemented on top of the flight simulation sustem to create an uncanny broom flight action experience inside the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. This included an Interactive Battle System featuring a state machine driving Death Eater swarm behaviours; attack and defence wand spell casting system, including hands and body gesture and audio user interface controls implemented in Unreal Engine, and finally, one hundred and forty real time synchronized virtual-physical effects were designed and implemented, including interactive controls for water misting, air cannons, smell aerosols and haptics floor rumble to reinforce key story moments and the illusion of presence.

Acknowledgments

The Creative team at Wevr thanks everyone involved in making this project a reality. Warner Bros Studio, The Blair Partnership, Keylight, our talented art, animation and technical teams, and our multiple collaborators: Counterpunch Animation, Beyond-FX, ASC, Source Sound, Manic Machine and Dreamscape Immersive.

Wevr Credits

Production Company WEVR Directed by LUIS BLACKALLER and ANTHONY BATT Produced by ANTHONY BATT and LUIS BLACKALLER Technical Direction by MARCEL SAMEK Executive Producers NEVILLE SPITERI, ANTHONY BATT Senior Producer MARCUS IREMONGER Interactive Producer BOB ZUCKER Associate Art Producer JESSE LEHROFF Animation Associate Producer WESLEY BUTCHKO Office Production Assistant CASEY SCOTT Production Assistant JAZMIN MARTINEZ Production Assistant NATE JONES Researcher VERONICA MOONHILL Layout Artist PABLO PLAISTED Storyboard Artist JOSE LUIS MANZUR CEPEDA Concept Artists NATALIE CORSIE, TIANA MAROS, VAHE YEFREMIAN Additional Concept Art AARON SIMS CREATIVE Game Engine Visual Development CESAR MONTERO Additional Visual Development TIM MCMAHON Software Prototyping Engineer IAN BERDEI Software Prototyping Engineer DAVE LEJEUNE Hardware Prototyping Engineer STEVE GALLE Senior Technical Animator JON ROHLAND Technical Animator DAVID THORNFIELD Lead Technical Designer DAVE LEJEUNE Technical Designers FILIP KOSTIC, ROBERT RUUD Level Designer ERIK WELD Senior Software Engineer KEVIN MACK Software Engineers SYLVIE SHERMAN, GEORG ANEMOGIANNIS, ELISA YOUNG, RASIK RAMESH, JULIEN COLLINS Pipeline Software Engineer STEVE GALLE, JOANNA ANTHONY Additional Software Engineering JOHN SAHAS, TIM ARMSTRONG Lead Character Artist DAVID VIOLA Additional Character Art AARON SIMS CREATIVE Lead Environment ARTIST GENNADY BABICHENKO Sr Technical ARTIST BRYAN BROWN Technical Artist NAHAN MEYER Sr Environment Artists MICHAEL DUNNAM, DOUGLAS GUANLAO, BRANDON JOHNSON Environment Artists ANDY HWANG, LOGAN ERDNER, ROBERT KILLICK, ELLIE METZELAAR, PETER WEI-CHIEH WANG, AKIN ADEKILE, AUDEL BARAJAS, SHASHANK VERMA Jr Environment Artists LANCE VERMEER, BRANNON ROGERS, STEPHANIE WANG, RACHEL MCKEEN, JOHN HOLD Additional Environtment Art AARON SIMS CREATIVE Lead Animator NATE SMITH Senior Animators JIM DODD, JORDI GIRONES Animators ERIK KEEFER, WILLI ANTON, KATHLEEN RENDON, CHRISTIAN DEANDA Motion Capture Consultant JONAH AUSTIN Lead Rigger LONG PHAN Senior Rigger ELI ENIGENBURG Jr Rigger JOSE OLGUIN Lead Tech JOANNA ANTHONY VR Tech RAMIRO DURAN Quality Assurance JEAN CHOW, JOE GARCIA Stage support BOB ZUCKER Motion Capture Unit Directed by LUIS BLACKALLER Senior Motion Capture Technician WESLEY BUTCHKO Motion Capture Technician CASEY SCOTT Motion Capture Game Engine Technician FILIP KOSTIC Talking Paintings Unit Directed by LUIS BLACKALLER Talking Paintings Cinematographer ADAM HERSKO-RONATAS Talking Paintings Coproducer WESLEY BUTCHKO, VERONICA MOONHILL Talking Paintings Editing and VFX ADAM HERSKO-RONATAS Talking Paintings Costume Designer / Propmaster VERONICA MOONHILL Talking Paintings Assistant to Costume Designer NAT MOONHILL Talking Paintings Production Coordinator NATE JONES Talking Paintings Production Assistant RAMIRO DURAN The Fat Lady Portrait EILEEN MONTGOMERY Voice Dobby GABRIEL BROWN Voice Hagrid BRIAN STIVALE Voice Argus Filch MARK JEARY-FAIRBAIRN Voice Nearly Headless Nick STEVEN KELLY Voice VR AI Construct LESLIE FRAY Spatial Audio by SOURCE SOUND Supervising Sound Designer TIM GEDEMER Audio Implementation and Design FRANCOIS LAFLEUR Additional Audio Implementation ROBERT RICE Unreal Audio System Design ROBERT RICE Sound Design BRYAN JERDEN, JIM SCHAEFER, KLAUS SHIPMAN, NICK INTERLANDI, TIM WALSTON Spatial Audio Mixing TRAVIS PRATER Music Composer PENKA KOUNEVA Additional Music Editing and Sound Design BRENDAN HOGAN Principal VFX by BEYOND-FX INC Lead VFX artist KEITH GUERRETTE Senior VFX artist MIKE DUDLEY VFX artists PRESTON SCHULZ, THOMAS ATCHLEY Junior VFX artist VEER SHARMA VFX Project Manager TROY LAWRENCE Beyond-fx additional thanks DOUG HOLDER, BECKA MCINTOSH Wevr Production Executive SHANE ROBINSON Wevr IT/Devops Manager JOANNA ANTHONY Wevr Studio Coordinator SHAUNA WHITHERSPOON Wevr Special Thanks THOMAS GEWECKE, YAIR LANDAU, JK ROWLING, THE BLAIR PARTNERSHIP, KEVIN TSUJIHARA, SCOTT YARA, JAKE ROWELL