Spatial construction, scale, materials, optimization and preparation before the asset enters the web pipeline.
PRODUCT / SPATIAL / WEBAR
ORB WALK-IN
A browser-based spatial system for turning rooms, properties and designed environments into portable AR experiences. I developed the concept from architectural-scale experiments into a repeatable web-to-mobile pipeline that lets someone preview a space, launch it from a link or QR code, and step into it from their own device.
ENTER ORB WALK-IN01 / PREMISE
What if a space could travel instead of the person?
Orb Walk-In grew out of experiments I was already doing around launching architecture into augmented reality. I was interested in a simple problem: photos and video can show a room, but they still keep the viewer outside of it. I wanted the environment itself to become portable, something a person could call up on a phone and experience spatially without installing a dedicated application.
The orb became the interface between those two states. From the outside it behaves like a contained preview of another place. Once launched in AR, the scale relationship changes and the viewer can physically approach, inspect and step into the environment. That made the idea useful beyond a single demo: real estate, interiors, hospitality, exhibitions and other spatial experiences could all use the same underlying system while changing the world inside it.
02 / EXPERIENCE MODEL
One environment, several ways to enter it.
I designed Orb Walk-In around progressive access. The experience needs to make sense before AR is ever activated: someone can encounter the room on the web, inspect the spatial object, and understand what they are about to launch. Mobile then becomes the bridge from a browser experience into a physical-scale one.
Keeping those states connected also makes the system easier to distribute. A property page, campaign, QR code or direct link can all point toward the same spatial asset pipeline instead of requiring a custom native app for every experience.
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EXPERIENCE 01
PREVIEW / WEB
The spatial experience begins as something understandable in the browser. A visitor can encounter the environment before deciding to move it into AR.
03 / ENTER THE SPACE
From object to architecture.
The core interaction is a change of scale. The orb can first be understood as an object, but the experience becomes meaningful when the environment is placed at a scale that relates to the viewer's body. A room stops being an image of a room and becomes a spatial reference the person can move toward and around.
That transition is why I kept the launch process lightweight. The technical work sits behind an interaction that should feel almost ordinary: open, place, walk. The final video for this section can show the browser handoff, mobile launch and the moment the viewer physically enters the space.
ORB / WALK-IN DEMO
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04 / ASSET PIPELINE
Building a room that can survive the browser.
Spatial work becomes a performance problem very quickly. A model can look correct in Blender and still be the wrong asset for a mobile browser. I had to think about geometry, textures, file size, materials, scale and how the same environment would behave when it moved from a 3D workspace into web delivery and then into AR.
I built the workflow around reusable stages rather than treating every room as a new technical experiment. Source material is prepared in Blender, optimized for runtime, exported into the formats required by the target devices, tested in the browser, and then iterated against real mobile behavior. That pipeline became part of the product itself.
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PIPELINE 01
BUILD / BLENDER
The spatial environment is assembled and prepared as a real 3D asset, with scale, materials and geometry considered for the runtime it will eventually enter.
05 / TECHNICAL ARCHITECTURE
A lightweight stack around a heavy idea.
Orb Walk-In does not need a large application shell to make the spatial idea work. The technical system is deliberately lightweight: optimized 3D assets, browser presentation, device-aware AR launch paths and static hosting are combined into a delivery system that can be linked from an ordinary website.
This project is where the granular implementation details matter. Unlike Emory, where the strongest story is consultation and cross-platform client delivery, Orb Walk-In is my own system. The case study can expose the actual assembly: how the assets are built, converted, hosted, launched and tested, and how each layer contributes to making the final interaction feel simple.
A lightweight browser layer for presenting the 3D environment and bridging compatible devices into AR.
Device-appropriate spatial formats supporting browser preview and mobile AR delivery across Android and iPhone.
The interaction and presentation layer around the spatial asset without requiring a dedicated native application.
Fast static deployment for testing, iteration and public access to the browser-based experience.
Asset delivery and hosting infrastructure that keeps larger spatial and media files separate from the page shell.
06 / EVOLUTION
The product emerged from spatial experiments.
Orb Walk-In was not conceived as a finished product and then executed to a specification. It grew out of repeated experiments with architectural-scale AR: testing how buildings and rooms could be represented, what mobile devices could realistically handle, and how much friction a user would tolerate before the experience stopped feeling immediate.
Those experiments eventually produced a clearer product idea. Instead of treating every spatial demo as a one-off, I could standardize the browser entry, asset workflow, launch behavior and presentation around a repeatable system. That same foundation later became useful when I was brought into larger client work such as Emory Healthcare.
EVOLUTION 01
ARCHITECTURE
LAUNCHING FULL-SCALE SPACESThe earliest experiments focused on whether architecture itself could become portable AR content. These builds established the spatial premise before there was a product around it.
07 / BUILD NOTES
BUILD / PROCESS
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Making spatial media practical enough to use.
The interesting part of Orb Walk-In is not only that a room appears in augmented reality. It is the set of decisions required to make that room portable: how I model and optimize it, which formats are necessary, how the browser decides what to launch, where the assets live, and how the same experience is tested across devices.
This process section can hold the granular material that would be too detailed for the main page copy: Blender sessions, early failed launches, Model Viewer tests, GLB and USDZ exports, Netlify builds, CDN changes, mobile captures and the small technical corrections that gradually turned an experiment into a reusable spatial product.
LIVE PROTOTYPE
Open the current browser-based Orb Walk-In demo.
ENTER ORB WALK-IN