Loire en Poche

2025

School project: Brassart TOURS

ALZY Erwan

BACHELET Olivier

FAUCARD Gabin

VERRIER-TOLMONT Clément

The Loire Valley castles in the palm of your hand

Concept

Loire en Poche invites you to rediscover the Loire Valley châteaux, jewels of world heritage, in a whole new way. Thanks to Augmented Reality, each map becomes a gateway to a historical world: by scanning it, the château comes to life in 3D, revealing its architecture, its dimensions, and its details in a new light.

This application offers an immersive, fun, and educational experience, accessible to everyone. It allows visitors, students, and anyone curious about heritage to view and collect châteaux directly on their smartphones, wherever they are.

Designed to promote regional heritage, Loire en Poche is also aimed at cultural and tourism institutions wishing to enrich their digital offerings, modernize their outreach, and promote access to knowledge in an innovative way.

Tourism and development

With Loire en Poche, heritage comes alive beyond the museum walls. Users become active participants in their own discovery: they collect castles, interact with them, observe them from every angle, and can share their experience.

This interactive approach complements physical visits by offering a virtual first encounter with the sites or an enhanced souvenir after the visit. It's an ideal tool for attracting and retaining visitors as part of an innovative tourism strategy.

Education and mediation

Also designed as an educational tool, Loire en Poche allows teachers and students to approach art history, architecture, and heritage from an interactive perspective.

In the classroom or remotely, the castles become 3D study aids, manipulable and observable at will, a concrete and stimulating way to learn about the history of the Loire Valley.

Mock-up

Graphic concept and functionality of the Loire en Poche application.

Technology at the service of heritage

To bring the Loire Valley châteaux to life in Augmented Reality, each monument was modeled in 3D using 3ds Max, the industry-standard 3D software.

This step involves digitally recreating the volumes, shapes, and architectural details from plans, photographs, or surveys. The goal is to accurately reproduce the château's appearance while respecting its historical authenticity. However, smartphones have limited resources, so optimizing each model is essential to ensure a smooth experience. This means reducing the polygon count, simplifying the geometry while maintaining a realistic appearance.

Once the châteaux are modeled, the crucial step of texturing begins, adding color, relief, and realism to the surfaces. The technique used here is called triplanar mapping, a method for automatically applying textures to 3D volumes.

Unlike traditional texturing, which requires complex surface unwrapping (UV mapping), triplanar projection projects textures from three directions (X, Y, and Z), thus avoiding distortions and visible seams. This process allows for smooth and realistic rendering, even on irregular shapes such as towers, roofs, or sculpted stone, while reducing production time and technical constraints.

It's an aesthetically pleasing and efficient solution, ideal for real-time mobile viewing.

These 3D models are then integrated into Unity, a game engine that manages display, interactions, and augmented reality on mobile devices.

Heritage in 3 dimensions

Chenonceau

With its galleries suspended over the water, its symmetrical gardens, and its history intimately linked to women and freedom, the Château de Chenonceau invites every visitor on a true journey through time. A place where art, history, and humanity intertwine.

Nicknamed the “Ladies’ Château,” Chenonceau is one of the most iconic jewels of the Loire Valley. Over the centuries, it has been shaped, embellished, and protected by remarkable women, each leaving her mark on this masterpiece of the French Renaissance.

Azay-le-Rideau

Nestled in the heart of Touraine, the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau is one of the finest examples of the early French Renaissance from the 15th century. With its enchanting reflecting pool, sculpted staircases, and magnificently restored Renaissance salons, the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau offers an immersion into the elegance and harmony of the French Renaissance. Delicately situated on an island in the Indre River, it seems to float on the river's tranquil waters. A place where the art of living and the poetry of reflections converge to the delight of visitors.

Villandry

The last great Renaissance château built on the banks of the Loire, the Château de Villandry captivates as much by the purity of its architecture as by the splendor of its terraced gardens, where flowers, vegetables, and symbols of love intertwine. A true ode to beauty and order, Villandry offers a unique experience: that of a place where the French art of living is expressed in all its perfection.

More than just cards

At the heart of the Loire en Poche experience are small collectible cards, each representing a Loire Valley château.

By launching the app, users access a simple, visual menu allowing them to select the château they wish to explore.
They then simply place the card in the camera's field of view: instantly, the corresponding château appears in Augmented Reality, in 3D, on the smartphone screen.

Users can then rotate the card to observe the monument from all angles, or interact directly via the touchscreen to rotate or zoom in on architectural details.
Each experience is accompanied by explanatory texts and visuals, designed to guide the discovery and enrich the historical and artistic understanding of the château.

These cards transform the visit into a game of discovery and collection, where heritage and technology meet to offer an experience that is intimate, interactive, and educational.

From reality to virtual

This video demonstrates the Loire en Poche mobile app, which allows users to explore the Loire Valley châteaux in Augmented Reality.

Developed using the Unity engine and based on 3D models created in 3ds Max, the app offers a fun and immersive experience.
Thanks to small physical cards, users can display a faithful 3D representation of the château, which they can explore from every angle.

By combining technology, heritage, and education, Loire en Poche contributes to the transmission of a living memory of the Loire Valley. An innovative application serving cultural tourism, heritage education, and the digital enhancement of France's most iconic historical sites.

The Valley of Artists

Nicknamed the Valley of Kings and Artists since the Renaissance, the Loire Valley has always inspired creators. Its landscapes, its light, and the elegance of its châteaux make it a unique territory for artistic expression, where history and beauty have conversed for centuries.

In keeping with this tradition, my drawings of the Loire châteaux extend this tradition of observation and transmission.