Winchester Conundrum

Client: Samsung

Agency: Nightlight Labs & Grown-Up Studio

In May 2024 Samsung hosted a Samsung pop-up experience leveraging Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 Ultra. The Winchester Conundrum was an unforgettable digital escape room featuring a living portrait voiced and controlled by a live performer. 

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My contribution was on the software side. I built the entirety of the show controls within Touch Designer, as well as the Unreal Engine 5 based face tracking rig, and finally built the titular character of Winifred Winchester that the escape room host controlled.

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A custom pipeline was required not only to create the main character, but to then control the character live via webcam. The controls needed to be simple, as the individual controlling the experience was not only responsible for ushering guests through, but also staying in character. The character itself also required a ton of flexibility of facial expressions, and detail, to allow the actress to avoid constraining our highly skilled actresses.

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Software Used:

- Blender

- Unreal Engine 5

- Touch Designer

- Marvelous Designer

- Stable Diffusion / Automatic1111 / ComfyUI

- Faceware

- Custom Python Plugins