A reef that wraps a street corner

Anamorphic and creative content created for large volume LED displays in Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco corner, running locally relevant artistic content built in Unreal Engine, authored so the reef reads as one continuous space wrapping the building rather than two flat screens meeting at an edge.

Client: BH Properties
Sector: Public art & placemaking
Capability: Anamorphic content for volume LED
Year: 2025

The problem

Two screens, or one place?

A display that turns a corner is really two surfaces at an angle to each other. Play flat video across it and the join announces itself: the image breaks at the edge, and what should feel like a window reads as signage.

The client had four large canvases at Anchorage Square, in the heart of Fisherman's Wharf: two massive corner displays, a large portrait display and a double-sided bridge display. What they wanted for the two corner displays was anamorphic content that belonged to the place: the local aquatic scene, tied to San Francisco itself. We built the whole set that runs on the displays: two custom anamorphic pieces, a shark and a field of floating spheres, alongside jellyfish, a whale, a sea lion, floating anchors and a run of San Francisco scenes taking in the Golden Gate Bridge, Point Bonita Lighthouse, the streetcars, and the crabs, seagulls, fish and seals of the bay.

Anamorphic content only resolves from one place. The whole job comes down to finding the correct angle and sweet spot for a corner that size, and that is normally settled by trial and error once the rig is up and the street is watching. We built an accurate model of the shopping center and the world around it in Unreal Engine and measured and tested the scenes in the simulated world before anyone travelled. Authoring the anamorphic content directly in Unreal removed the roundtrip to other packages as well, so what reached site needed only minor adjustment.

What we simulated

Built for the geometry, not the rectangle

The scenes were built in Unreal Engine and authored against the real shape of the display, so the perspective resolves for someone standing on the street rather than for a flat canvas.

Anamorphic to a real viewpoint

The scene is composed for where people actually stand on the corner, so depth reads correctly across both faces instead of breaking at the join.

Photo-real, not stylised

Coral, fish, caustics and water movement rendered in Unreal, close enough to real that passers-by read it as an aquarium rather than a graphic.

A set of scenes, not one loop

A reef, jellyfish, a breaching humpback, a sea lion, floating anchors and a run of San Francisco scenes, so the corner changes through the day instead of repeating.

Scenes cut to each face

The reef runs wide across the corner; the humpback and the jellyfish are framed for the standalone portrait canvas in the plaza. Each scene was composed for the surface it plays on rather than letterboxed to fit.

Watch it

A great white shark rendered anamorphically on the corner LED volume, appearing to swim out of the building toward the street

The shark, from the sidewalk

The anamorphic scene resolving from the corner, at street level

Shot from across the street, where the illusion is composed to resolve. The scene runs its length and hands over to the reef.

What changed

What it did for the corner

It gave the shopping center a reason to be looked at. Dwell time at the corner went up, and a plain side of a building now reads as public art rather than signage.

The model

Solved in the simulation, before anyone travelled

The shopping center and the blocks around it were rebuilt in Unreal Engine, so the anamorphic scenes could be composed against the real geometry of the corner and checked from the positions people actually stand in. The sweet spot was found in the model rather than by trial and error on a lift.

An aerial view of the Anchorage Square model in Unreal Engine, showing the building, the surrounding streets and crossings, and the corner display — The shopping center and the blocks around it, rebuilt so the corner could be judged in its real setting rather than in isolation.

A close view in the Unreal Engine editor of the corner display running the shark scene, the illusion resolving across both faces of the volume — The shark scene tested against the corner itself, where the two faces meet and the illusion has to hold.

A street-level view in the Unreal Engine editor of the building corner with the shark scene playing, seen from across the intersection — Street level, from roughly where a person waits at the crossing. The editor gizmos are left in: this is the working model, not a render of it.

The content

Scenes from the set

Each scene was built as a real environment in Unreal rather than composited as a flat animation, so the camera could be placed to suit the display's geometry.