ÆDEN was designed to extend Anyma’s digital world beyond the LED canvas and into the live camera. For the Coachella Main Stage, that meant building an AR system capable of integrating Unreal Engine content into a large-scale live production while maintaining accurate perspective, lighting, and spatial relationships across multiple moving cameras.
The production began with Unreal Engine previsualization and content integration, optimizing the AR assets and animations supplied by ÆTHOS for real-time performance. ÆTHOS handled character development, rigging, and animation, including Beatrix, Anyma’s mech angel character modeled after BLACKPINK’s Lisa. AOIN integrated Beatrix and the additional AR assets into the Unreal environment and developed the systems required to bring them into the live production. When Lisa joined Anyma onstage as a guest performer, Beatrix appeared alongside her as her digital counterpart, creating one of the performance’s defining AR moments.
The system operated across three simultaneously active cameras, including two tripod cameras equipped with STYPE camera tracking and a Spidercam moving dynamically above the audience. Maintaining accurate tracking through the Spidercam’s continuous movement required precise alignment between the Unreal environment, camera perspective, and physical stage. STYPE and StypeLand formed the core of the tracking and compositing pipeline, keeping the digital elements locked to the Main Stage across all three camera perspectives.
DMX data from the lighting system was fed directly into the AR pipeline, allowing virtual elements to follow the same lighting cues as the physical stage. LED content was also used as a lighting source for the AR elements, extending the visual interaction between the screen, virtual characters, and physical environment. Scenic elements were tracked within the AR system and accounted for in the perspective, occlusion, and compositing passes, keeping the virtual and physical spaces precisely aligned.
The production ultimately required two full rounds of on-site integration after severe weather canceled the first Coachella weekend. AOIN returned for the second weekend to rebuild and operate the complete AR system, managing Unreal content, camera tracking, compositing, lighting integration, and live operation throughout the performance. The result was a real-time AR pipeline that extended ÆDEN beyond the physical LED canvas and into the broadcast camera, bringing Anyma’s digital world directly into the live stage environment.
