Project case study
A live mermaid in the fairy-tale oak
A virtual mermaid who talks to every tour group in real time: an actress drives her face and body from a hidden booth, and a neural network turns the 3D character into a living painting.
- Client
- National Centre “Russia”
- Venue
- NC “Russia”, Moscow
- Completed
The challenge
The exhibition needed a fairy-tale character who genuinely talks with children — reacts to the group, asks riddles, gives hints and jokes — instead of playing the same recorded video to everyone.
What Awake! delivered
We built a real-time performance pipeline. An actress in a booth works without a motion-capture suit: a Kinect tracks her head, shoulders, arms and fingers, and an iPhone with Live Link Face streams her facial expressions into Unity. The mermaid appears on three screens built into a fairy-tale oak, in sync with Resolume video and the room lighting. On top of the 3D render runs neural video stylisation, which turns the character into a painted, living image. The operator panel switches idle and live modes and runs the scenario: nine riddles with hints, a cat character and lighting cues.
Outcome
The first working prototype with body and face tracking was ready the day after the brief. The zone opened for guided tours in December 2025, and each group gets its own conversation with the mermaid.
Technologies and methods
Unity, Kinect body tracking, iPhone Live Link Face, real-time neural video stylisation, Resolume, operator control panel