FNAF 3D Characters for AR Experience

For the AR advertising campaign promoting the cinematic release of Five Nights at Freddy’s, we collaborated with Wakefield:XR to create optimized, animated 3D characters and environments for a new social AR experience. The project was produced for Universal Pictures and designed to deliver fast, high-impact horror moments directly to fans.

We love a technical challenge – especially when it involves bringing iconic cinematic characters into the hands of fans. Wakefield:XR managed the project end-to-end and brought us in to help craft one of the most critical pieces of the experience: high-quality, real-time-ready 3D assets.

The Challenge

The campaign’s goal was to use an immersive AR experience to pull fans directly into the world of Five Nights at Freddy’s and build hype around the movie release. Instead of a generic filter, the experience recreated the feeling of being inside the arcade and security rooms from the film – with flickering lights, worn‑out machines, and that unsettling feeling of being watched.

From our side, the challenge was technical and creative:

• Rebuild key locations from the movie – from the arcade area to the darker back rooms – so they instantly feel familiar to fans and set up the tension for a jump scare.
• Bring the animatronics to life with close‑range AR animations that feel like they’re stepping out of the FNAF universe and into the player’s physical space.
• Aggressively optimize geometry, textures, and materials so the entire scene – characters plus environment – runs smoothly on social AR, without losing the grimy, horror‑movie atmosphere that makes the experience believable.

The goal was not just to show a character in AR, but to briefly place the user inside the FNAF space, long enough for the scare to land and the movie announcement to stick.

The AR Experience

Together with Wakefield:XR we designed an experience where fans could receive a randomized jump scare from one of their favorite Five Nights at Freddy’s characters. Each playthrough could feature a different animatronic, encouraging repeat usage, longer dwell time, organic sharing and UGC.

Our optimized 3D assets helped ensure the scares hit hard – without dropped frames or visual compromises at the key moment.

AR Optimization

The most demanding part of the process was making cinematic assets behave like lightweight, production‑safe AR content. We focused on:

• Reducing polygon counts while preserving key shapes and character detail
• Baking lighting and surface detail into textures, then carefully compressing them for mobile
• Ensuring animations and materials performed smoothly on mobile devices

All assets were carefully prepared to integrate seamlessly into Wakefield:XR’s final AR builds across platforms.