B2Believe / LinkedIn / Tool of NA

The wall started out as a bland white on white that said “B2Boring”. Through the use of multiple digital painting tools, participants were able to deface the expected and create something unique. As the screen was augmented it would change from “B2Boring” to “B2Believe”. The experience was designed to be fun, expressive, and intuitive while having the range to create infinite pieces of collaborative digital art.

Painting in augmented reality had never been done before, so we were sure we could do it. To bring this experience to life, we took full advantage of the possibilities and technology that were already available and got creative with them. We used the HTC Vive Pro 2 headset and base stations together with five Vive 3.0 trackers to create the technical setup and integrate seamlessly with our custom-developed software, made in Unity.

To create a realistic feel of painting, we developed custom made hardware to mount onto the trackers, paintbrushes, markers, paint buckets and paint rollers. We attached the Vive trackers to our paint tools to give it more functionality: start and stop drawing, ability to switch colors and give it a realistic feel: just like you have to push the button on a graffiti can to start spraying, you would have to push the button on our graffiti can to activate the tracker. We also mimicked the behavior of the painting tools in our software, based on your position to the screen; for the spray can, when you start close it will have thinner strokes than when you stand further away, which makes it really intuitive.