Anthony Batt

Anthony Batt serves as the co-founder and co-director of Wevr, where he has played a pivotal role in developing two state-of-the-art virtual reality experiences, Wizards Take Flight and Chaos at Hogwarts, featured at the Harry Potter flagship store in New York. In collaboration with The Blair Partnership and Warner Brothers, Batt directed the creative development and production of these experiences, focusing on interactive storytelling, art, animation, and system design. His work involved character visual development and 3D design, drawing inspiration from the original Harry Potter films and J.K. Rowling’s books. Batt utilized a combination of real-time motion capture and keyframed animation in a virtual production setting, employing Xsense and Rococo mocap suits with Unreal Engine Livelink systems to capture human performances. He developed a blueprint-based interactive character animation system that reacts to player behavior and gaze, creating unique narrative experiences. Additionally, Batt was responsible for the hardware design and software implementation of the physical user experience for Wizards Take Flight, which includes a fully interactive Broom Flight Simulation with physical effects synchronized to story events. He also implemented an Interactive Battle System with a state machine driving Death Eater behaviors and a spell casting system based on gestures and audio cues in Unreal Engine. Furthermore, Batt designed and implemented over one hundred real-time synchronized virtual-physical effects, such as water misting, air cannons, smell aerosols, and haptic floor rumbles, to enhance the immersive experience and reinforce key story moments.