The Mystery of King Tut: An Adventure Through Time

Inspiration

My partner I and visited a fascinating exhibition about King Tut of Egypt back in December 2022 which was conducted by National Geography. The exhibition was labeled as an "immersive experience" but we both knew that Augmented Reality could have had a monumental impact on this experience if it had been a part of it. We decided to bring King Tut's story into AR with the intention of having both fun and educational aspects for people to see what the discovery of the tomb might have been like in a physical sense. We wanted to create an identical twin of the physical tomb discovered in Egypt and allow people to solve puzzles to uncover the location of the coffin and be present in it from the comfort of their home.

What it does

King Tut's AR experience is an interactive, educational lens created to teach the users about history of Egypt, in particular with King Tut. This includes interactivity and playfulness where the user has to solve riddles and overcome obstacle in order to find the tomb and its treasures. They will learn about ancient Egypt symbols and also treasures found in king Tut's tomb. The tomb section is the exact replica of the real-life location and the user can walk in it just as is he/she is in Egypt.

How we built it

Ideation and Prototype
3D Mock ups and AR Feasibility test for various effects such as Hand occlusion & Tracking
3D modelling, animation, texturing, baking
Asset Optimisation
Configuration and scripting
Game play UI design and implementation
Sound Design
Testing and publishing ## Challenges we ran into
File size limit: As we progressed, the lens got heavier as we were adding more cool assets to it. At one point we had 15mb of assets stored in the lens. Luckily, with remote asset features, we were able to mitigate this issue.
Import/Export 3D files: Since we were modelling most of the assets from scratch and then texturing them and at the end bake and compress it, it happened a lot that the asset was not displayed as expected when imported into LensStudio. We hit various issues such as, incorrect light information, UV mesh error, triangle numbers and etc. New concepts and Domains: we picked up this challenge to improve our skills and we went way beyond our comfort zone. This is the first time , we were using js and it was both a big challenge and great achievement in terms of improving in this domain. Other new areas were VFX Graph editor, remote assets and etc. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
Using JS and scripting to achieve higher level of customization and flexibility
Modelling and texturing an exact replica of King Tut tomb for this experience (the whole tomb and wall paintings are identical to the real one) -Sound Design: To make it more immersive, we added dedicated sound tracks to each interaction and to the extent that for the final game finished audio, we composed some of the audio from scratch using FLStudio to match the Egyptian theme. -Game play structure: Halfway through the development, we realized that we are literally making a mini-game. So, we have to come up with game strategy, negative scenario and many other "what ifs". Using game strategy, we were able to teach users about the story even if they made a wrong choice/decisions. ## What we learned
JS and scripting
VFX Editor
Optimizing high poly and detailed assets & textures
More features in Lens Studio such as remote assets ## What's next for The Mystery of King Tut: An Adventure Through Time
For the next few days we are going to create content around the process and outcome
Present this lens to local exhibitions and organizers in Canada
Use it as a case study for our clients to show them how AR can be both educational and fun
Re-create the scene with high poly assets and textures in Unreal Engine 5 to be used as a VR experience over the course of the next 3-4 months