How do you bring the mouse—which has been lovingly drawn for as long as anyone can remember—into the third dimension? The mouse’s appearance and personality are as famous as they are beloved, and have evoked a sense of familiarity in people of all ages for 50 years. The challenge was to preserve this while avoiding the generic nature of conventional 3D aesthetics.
The simple, iconic shape, the mouse’s signature gaze, the upright gait: We didn’t simply recreate and animate all of this in 3D—we optimized it for every perspective.
To mark its 50th anniversary, WDR in Cologne unveiled the official 3D version of “Germany’s most famous mouse”—created by Machbar.
With its black outline and flat color fill, the 3D mouse can be rendered just like the familiar two-dimensional mouse. A version without an outline and featuring a lit shader—which adds a sense of depth—was created specifically for use in augmented and mixed reality applications. And here, too, there was no outcry from mouse fans: after all, there’s a lot of “mouse” in this 3D mouse.
Using the 3D Mouse, we’ve developed an augmented reality app that lets MausFans bring the mouse home and take photos with it. All you have to do is visit the website www.diemausin3D.de using an AR-enabled smartphone or tablet. Since its release, countless MausFans from all over the world have posted and shared photos with the 3D Maus.
The 3D Maus even made it onto the news program *Tagesthemen*. Together with Pinar Atalay, she greeted viewers on March 5, 2021—including an introduction in Turkish.
Especially for Maus’s 50th birthday, a 1.70-meter-tall, colorful Maus figure was produced based on our 3D data, which WDR Director General Tom Buhrow ceremoniously unveiled. It stands in front of the WDR building in Cologne and has since become a popular selfie spot for Maus fans.
