Due to Corona crisis Kyotographie International Photography Festival was postpone and rescheduled to September this year.
In order to let everybody who could not come to Kyoto enjoy some of the events we collaborated with Bluefog Solution to provide Kyotographie with a new kind of virtual tour. Not the usual series of 360 pictures that feel so cold and miss a real 3D feeling but a brand new medium.
We used photogrammetry to reproduce in 3D the front and the garden of KondayaGenbei Machiya. That very old and traditional building of Kyoto center was hosting this year BMW sponsored Wing Shya photography exposition. We used Unity to recreate the complete machiya expo area, integrating our 3D models and original scan of the interior decoration. WebGL was used to create a browser based visit that could offer a real 3D experience to the visitors. The tour includes animation, clickable content to visualize photographs, video and documents. A low definition version for mobile device and a higher quality version for PC were created. A VR android version was also produced as a tool to support the design of the 3D environment but not published.
We plan next year to bring better quality as device’s power increase. It was a real challenge to reduce high quality photogrammetry modeles in small files for a quick upload and that could be rendered smoothly on all devices.
More content is in preparation and we hope to bring next year more locations for Kyotographie fans to visit online and for new visitors to have a taste and come over to get the full experience in Kyoto.
In addition to browser based computer and mobile version we plan to bring App for a better experience and VR/AR headset content.