Legoland Mythica
THE BRIEF
In 2023 Legoland Germany followed Windsor's successful launch of the Mythica area, and opened their own.
As part of this expansion, we were asked to bring some of the Windsor AR experiences over to the German park, create an entirely new one around Sea Serpent, a giant creature statue in the middle of a brand new rollercoaster, and also create a video sequence to play on panoramic screens encased into the new area's entrance tunnel.
THE EXPERIENCE
As we'd used Zappar's Extended Tracking to attach the AR experiences to the park locations in Windsor, transferring existing experiences to the new locations was a cinch.
A few LIDAR scans of the area showed us what we had to work with, so the team back in London could correctly position the AR content without constantly being on-site.
The bigger challenges were creating an animation for the Sea Serpent character that would convey it's enourmous scale, and the entrance animation sequence for the entrance tunnel.
For the Sea Serpent, we created a 3D version of the statue and took some inspiration from the classic Jaws hologram scene in Back to The Future, animating the creature to make it look as if it was taking a bite out of rollercoaster riders, before turning to the park visitors and having a go at them.
The entrance tunnel sequence required an animated video sequence playing over 3 side-by-side screens on both sides of the tunnel.
Our concept for the sequence was to have the main Mythica creatures appear to welcome park guests, joining them for a few steps as they ventured into the Mythica area.
Separate individual screens present in the rides' queue lines required different content, so we created different sequences that once more created the illusion of the creatures being aware of the guests' presence.
THE TECH
The AR activations leveraged our existing app integration, with new content being simply loaded over-the-air.
For the video sequences, we turned to Unreal Engine once more to build on the success we had with the Legoland Magical Forest content.
With 5 characters appearing on the main tunnel sequence, and 3 others on the queue line screens, our 3D team had their plates full.
This time around most of the characters had some form of hair, and we wanted to make sure it looked absolutely lush to make the creatures feel more believable.
Most of the creatures had a LEGO form as well, which was incredibly complex to handle and animate. For the transition from LEGO to organic, we leveraged the effect we'd already established in the original Mythica cave sequence, which worked brilliantly here once more.
When it came to the background environment for the creatures, we went all out and created a fantasy-inspired scene with unique rock formations, beautiful greenery, and surreal water.
Being able to preview all of this in real-time as we evolved it, was crucial to our creative process, and to keep costs down while ensuring a great quality end result.
THE RESULTS
With the experience available in multiple languages, distributed over Legoland Discovery Centres across the world, and also Legoland Germany, the response has been amazing.
Legoland saw an increase in app downloads and returning visitors, particularly post park-visit, when previouly there tended to be less of a reason to open the app at home.
