The Crayola Experience
Orlando, FL, Mall of America, MN, & Easton, PA
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It’s playtime again at Crayola Experience’s Rainbow Rain! Beaudry Interactive was brought in to lend some of our magic to an existing attraction that needed a little TLC. Or said another way: Crayola asked us to help rebuild an experience for them, which we were very excited to do!
Rainbow Rain gameplay involves guests interacting with virtual streams of colorful fluids falling from above. By seeing themselves in the projected scene, visitors immediately identify that they are part of the gameplay and can use their bodies to directly affect the flowing colors. No written instructions are needed; by simply moving past the attraction the gameplay is explained and guests are drawn in. The guests can redirect flows with their body movements allowing for pooling and mixing of the colorful streams. The interaction style encourages multiple players at once by allowing them to directly engage with each other on the screen, creating unique obstacles which the streams must flow around. The only limit to guest participation is how many people can fit in the play zone and manipulate the streams with their physical form at a given time.
A variety of technologies are brought together to bring the Rainbow Rain experience to life. The projection system is fed by a computer running a sophisticated commercial 3D game engine. The engine incorporates a real-time fluid simulation system capable of producing more than 30,000 particles per second (a.k.a. the colorful fluid streams). A high resolution, high frame-rate industrial 2D camera is used to both capture the guests' image for projection and to carve out their unseen silhouettes as the source of obstacles and forces that interact with the fluid. A variety of computer vision and real-time compositing techniques are employed to achieve this synergy. The entire system is self-calibrating and operable by Crayola’s staff and docents with minimal maintenance.
