There’s something pleasingly mad about going to bed in Inverness (or several other ‘points north’) then waking up in central London…and as regular users of the Caledonian Sleeper, the particular novelty of snoozing your way to work, home, or your holidays is very familiar to Soluis.
With this being the case, we were thrilled when the team behind the Sleeper service asked us to create some high-impact visualisation of their fantastic new trains, revamped cabins, and service – which are set to become the ‘Journey of a Night Time’ for overnight travel between London and Scotland.
The concept required interactive visual materials that would help the Sleeper team both illustrate and promote the new trains to a wide internal & external audience, whilst communicating the advanced nature of the upgraded Sleeper experience.
Using the Unreal games engine, we created a central interactive model of the new ‘Journey of a Night Time’ trains and cabins. This then allowed us to deliver a suite of media which are now being used for marketing and audience engagement.
The high quality of the visualisation output from the games engine environment allowed us to quickly produce a fly-through animation of the trains, showcasing the new Sleeper product.
CGI stills were generated from the interactive environment for promotional use, alongside a bespoke AR app that launches the Sleeper content from business cards. This app includes 360-degree views from inside the carriages launched from 3D AR models and is available for download now on iOS and Android.
The real-time, games engine approach taken for the project also means that each of the environments can be explored via VR headsets.
We have also just completed a new immersive animation for the revamped Sleeper service for use in Sublime’s Reality Portal… and which is in Glasgow Central Station today (26th July) for anyone in the area.
The content and the diversity of output the ‘real-time’ development approach gave us has been very well received and has proved to be invaluable to the Sleeper team in presenting the new trains product.
Keep your eyes peeled for more content and outreach from this exciting project later this year, ahead of the first journeys on the new service from late October!