Australian Open — 3D AO Virtual Hub

The Hub extended beyond a single stadium or virtual room. It recreated a network of Australian Open environments, from courts and public precincts to hospitality, retail, entertainment and networking spaces.

The challenge was therefore one of consistency and scale: many distinct locations had to read as parts of the same virtual Australian Open.

The environment production was handled by a two-person 3D team.

The second artist focused primarily on modeling. As lead, I coordinated the production and took responsibility for assembling those assets into the finished environments, animation, cameras, crowd population and final rendering.

The arena’s populated bowl and bright blue court anchor both the daytime and night treatments. At night, lighting shifts the focus toward the court and scoreboard.

The Live Stage brings the focus from the stadium to the audience and the active screen at the front of the stage.

The enclosed lounge provides a quieter scale than the outdoor precincts, with closer views of seating, screens and hospitality details.

The environments were designed to be experienced through movement.

Camera paths had to introduce each location, communicate its scale and guide the user from one part of the virtual precinct to another while maintaining a consistent sense of place.

I designed and animated the camera movement used throughout the 3D experience.

A recreation of the Australian Open needed more than architecture.

I handled the crowd setup and simulation used throughout the environments, balancing the visual density of a major sporting event with the practical demands of producing and rendering many scenes.

The Live Stage idle holds the camera on the crowd and screen, letting the changing screen content carry the activity.

The project involved a large volume of animated environment content rather than a single hero render.

I prepared and managed the scenes for final rendering through a render-farm workflow, coordinating outputs across different environments, cameras and revisions while maintaining visual consistency across the experience.

These two frames are samples from the daytime arena output sequence.

The AO Virtual Hub gave Australian Open partners, sponsors and guests a way to experience Melbourne Park remotely. The Infosys Meridian platform brought the 3D environments together with live and archived content, hospitality, networking and virtual events.

My contribution was the 3D spatial experience and its production. The platform and backend were outside that scope.

• Official Infosys walkthrough ↗
• Official AO Virtual Hub overview ↗
• Read about the deployed hub ↗

Registered users

900+

Partner organisations

28

Countries

24

Sessions

18,710

• Source: Tennis Australia Annual Report 2020–2021 ↗