Lincoln. Generative Rejuvenation. Unreal Engine.

Role: Creative Lead, Experience Designer,
Team:
Unreal Engine Artists, Composers, Designers, Producer
Disciplines:
Realtime Experience, Design, Animation, Sound Design

Rejuvenation: A Real-Time Multisensory Sanctuary Experience for Lincoln

Lincoln’s brand promise—Sanctuary—requires more than just quiet cabins and premium materials. To fully embody this ethos, my team developed Generative Rejuvenation: a multisensory, in-vehicle experience designed to actively shift the driver’s mental and physical state. The current implementation is a linear, choreographed sequence delivered through embedded video, custom sound beds, and coordinated physical features such as seat massage and scent diffusion. The experience is divided into two phases: Relax and Invigorate, each tailored to promote specific cognitive and somatic responses.

As the HMI team evolved toward real-time environments powered by Unreal Engine, I proposed transitioning Rejuvenation into a fully interactive, real-time experience, breaking free from the constraints of pre-rendered content. The vision was to create a system where dynamic audio-visual cues, sensor-triggered states, and generative behaviors could respond contextually to the user and vehicle environment.

The concept was approved and funded as a first-in-class application of generative design logic inside Unreal Engine for an automotive OEM. I led the engagement of a specialized Unreal Engine agency to develop the foundational prototype. The resulting system integrates:

  • Real-time volumetric lighting

  • Dynamic material shaders

  • Procedural animation

  • Generative sound layers

  • Context-aware transitions triggered via vehicle state data

The demo below showcases the early prototype—a proof of concept for how immersive, ambient experiences can shift from passive media playback to active, generative wellbeing systems within the vehicle cabin.

Built in Unreal, this real-time prototype adds interactivity to the experience—letting users adjust camera, color, and atmosphere as the sequence unfolds.

Generative Soundscapes

Generative Sound Design in Real-Time

To push the experience beyond static media, I directed my audio design team to move away from linear tracks and instead compose original generative soundscapes, purpose-built for Unreal Engine. We architected the system using layered stems—ambient textures, tonal motifs, rhythmic pulses—each mapped to the same interactive hooks driving the real-time visuals. This approach allowed for responsive audio that evolves with the user’s input and the system’s internal logic.

Trigger events (e.g., color shifts, camera motion, state transitions) dynamically controlled which layers entered or faded, resulting in a composition that was never exactly the same twice. The final sound environment was spatially mixed in Dolby Atmos, ensuring full 3D immersion and acoustic fidelity worthy of a premium cabin experience.

This wasn’t a sound bed—it was a living, spatial composition engine, tightly coupled with the visual system and designed to scale with future interaction complexity.

Theme Development

linear export

linear export

linear export

interactive capture

interactive capture