Museum Maker

March 2020 to Today

Since march 2020, I work as a freelance Unity Developer and Interactive Designer for ExtraArt, a company that develops 360° virtual visits of art expositions and museums.

Museum maker is a unity project that I’ve turned into an “engine” that allows me to make virtual visits of the aforementioned expositions.

Those visits are avaibles on several platforms:

  • Web Page ( WebGL)
  • Android
  • iOS
  • Oculus Quest (VR)
  • Windows touch screens

I am the only unity developer on this project, so the entire development of the program is my creation.

I’ve also designed most of the interactivity of the visits themselves.

App Features

  • Navigation between 360° photos
  • Click to pop-up artworks
  • High-definition zoom 
  • Almost real-time label update (every time the app is launch, its updating, useful when the customer want to change some details on the text)
  • Audio guide through the rooms
  • Punctual audio commentary on the artworks
  • Punctual 360° video
  • Punctual 2D video commentary on the artworks
  • Interactive Map
  • Asset bundles system to load rooms during the visit instead of during the launch to prevent the initial load from taking too long.
  • Scrolling system to navigate between artworks by clicking on a button (PC) or swiping (mobile).

Engine Features

In order to create the visits as quickly as possible, I automated a maximum of tasks.

  • Auto-linking of the gates to the previous and the next room, based on their positions in the 3D space.
  • Auto-linking of the artwork and its label based on its name. The system will get a Json database with every labels written when the app launches, then it will parse and find the corresponding text by using the artwork name.
  • Dynamic alignment of the text of the labels, different font and size according to the written information. And systematic alignment at the bottom of the work. The system is also aligned when a button broadcasting sound or video is associated with the work.

Each artwork having a different dimension, I also had to automate these processes:

  • Auto-generate the interaction zone of each work when it appears in a pop-up, based on an alpha checking when mouse hover or on touch.
  • Auto-calculate the limits of the camera movements while zooming (to avoid not having the artwork on screen) by checking if there is an absolute black pixel on the borders of the screen when the camera move.

Links

ExtraArt website: https://www.extraart.fr/#visites-interactives-a-360
Musée Fabre, Exposition Jean-Ranc : https://museefabre.extraart.fr/
Musée des beaux arts d’Orléans, Exposition Jean-Marie Delaperche : https://expodelaperche.extraart.fr/
Suquet des Artistes, Exposition François Fauchon : https://suquetdesartistes-francoisfauchon.extraart.fr/
Centre d’arts Malmaison, Exposition Christine Boumeester : https://xp.extraart.fr/centredartlamalmaison-boumeester/