British and Irish Lions team up with Vodafone to create AR avatars

Vodafone and British & Irish Lions introduced an official tour app giving fans the chance to ‘Become a Lion’ on their phone.

You can create your own AR Lions avatar in the app. You can then bring this personalized avatar to life in 3D augmented reality and choose from a range of animation options such as walking, running, dodging and celebrating right in your living room.

Watch how Vodafone and Happy Finish made this happen using Xsens MVN Animate motion capture:

For the app they captured the movements of Lions legends Sam Warburton, Paul O’Connell, Ian McGeechan and Jeremy Guscott. But also comedian and Rugby fan Lloyd Griffith. Each player wore an Xsens motion capture suit to accurately track and record the movements of these Lions legends.

After you create your avatar in the app, you can start playing around with the player. Your avatar will appear right in your living room, or in your garden or wherever you happen to be facing your phone. You are also able to shrink or enlarge your avatar to giant or miniature proportions.

The Corona virus posed some challenges, as Rugby is normally a full-contact sport.

“In pre-Covid times we would have motion captured Paul O’Connell and Sam Warburton actually tacking and lifting each other as in a line out,” says Dan Cheetam, creative technology specialist from Happy Finish.

“But due to social distancing constraints, we needed to find work-around solutions, such as using tackle bags and then manually fine-tuning the recorded movements afterwards.”

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