When Apple released the Apple Vision Pro headset, we were keen as ever to get our hands on it and start making our own interactive pieces. To test the water, we have been working on Greenify (Link to app store), an immersive way to beautify your environment.
In our increasingly urbanized world, Greenify offers a digital oasis: a way for players to cultivate and nurture their own virtual garden in the comfort of their homes or workspaces. Set in the real world, it lets you integrate nature seamlessly into your space, transforming mundane surroundings into vibrant, flourishing gardens teeming with life.
The experience takes place in your real-world environment, using Mixed Reality technology to overlay virtual vegetation and wildlife directly into your room or workspace. The game adapts to the physical layout of the space, so the virtual garden feels like it genuinely belongs there rather than sitting on top of it.
At its core, Greenify is about offering a peaceful escape from the hustle and bustle of modern life, a blend of virtual reality and nature that turns your physical surroundings into lush, green landscapes. It’s our attempt to bring the joy of plants and the beauty of nature into people’s everyday lives in a whole new way, wherever they happen to be.
What did we do?
STEP 1 : Modelled high quality vegetation
We used traditional 3D modelling techniques such as sculpting and texture painting, but importantly, the power of the headset meant we did not need to optimise assets as heavily as we had originally anticipated. A newer part of our workflow is the use of photogrammetry during the reference-gathering stage, now that mobile apps make creating a 3D scan almost as effortless as taking a photograph. We also created a series of distinct biomes designed to evolve over time into platforms for storytelling, conservation initiatives, and educational content.
STEP 2 : Combined it with Vision Pro’s AI capabilities to track and make sense of world around you
Video of greybox tests while working on the animations
Video of test spawning in Unity Editor
We worked on different ways of spawning vegetation around the environment, recognizing the shape of the world and using it effectively. We loved the springy animation of plants growing in a circle around the point where you touch a surface, so after a few iterations, we had something which felt alive and fitted the visual goal we were trying to achieve. Just like in nature, there are different layers, like rock and soil, undergrowth, moss, grasses and bigger more ornate plants and flowers. We also prototyped different ways of using the onboard world tracking functionalities of the Vision Pro until we came up with something we felt happy with. Our team is already very skilled in Unity, so we leveraged that expertise to develop quickly. We used Unity 3D alongside Polyspatial, Unity’s toolkit that acts as a bridge between Unity and the Apple Vision Pro. This combination allowed us to develop very rapidly and reuse many of the techniques our team was already familiar with in Unity, now applied to this new technology.
STEP 3 : Added a touch of playfulness to interact with the world around you
This is where we really deepened the experience into something moving. We added butterflies and bees which fly around the environment, spawning from glowing orbs, and landing on the plants or your hands. Different biomes, such as a jungle and the insect conservation and education scene “bee positive”. The idea is that these biomes can be extended in the future to push different conservation or education causes. On the sound design front we worked equally hard, blending in a building and evolving immersive soundtrack that brings the experience together, helped by the multiple layers of spatial nature sounds following elements around the environment. Hand-crafted glow / ripple effects draw you in to touch the walls around you, and at the end, you get feedback on the species of flora and fauna in your environment.
YOU HAVE THE GREEN TOUCH!
What we have learned
The AVP is taking things to the next level in terms of what can be rendered, (and then ultimately the immersion that can be provided). Previously, we were working with hundreds of thousands of polygons—now, we can think in the millions. This is so evident when creating organic and natural environments, as they benefit most and become more realistic.
We strongly believe that this kind of experience could bring a new interactive dimension to learning. Imagine ecosystems unfolding in real-time, where plants and biomes respond to your presence. The potential applications in education, conservation, and digital art are enormous.
Want to try it for yourself?
Either download it from the Vision Store (Link), or get in touch for a demo.
If you’re an educational institution, botanical garden, vegetation artist, etc, and would like to add your own biomes to the app, let’s talk!
Clyde Pashley
Lead 3D modeling & Unity development
