For my last Digital Heritage Assignment, I combined my previous three assignments to create a “Bay Area and Chinese Culture” exhibit. This exhibit features models of artifacts excavated from San Jose’s former Second Market Street Chinatown, as well as “video projections” regarding Chinese courtyards and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Pre-production:
When planning out my exhibit, my first instinct was to make it the walkthrough itself am interesting experience, which pushed me to use stairs and multiple levels throughout the exhibit so viewers could travel in various directions and see various perspectives. I decided to draw on the layout of Chinese courtyards to make the exhibit floor plan, and used the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay as basis for the color scheme and handrails throughout the exhibit. The layout also had two a darker areas where I planned to put the “video projections” of my A2 and A3 final works. After planning the layout, I decided to fill the display cases with my A1 final work, as well as other artifacts from the same source.
The exhibit was divided into 3 floors: the first floor with the entrance and Chinese courtyard display, the second floor with the Chinatown and Golden Gate Bridge displays, and third floor where visitors could view the entire gallery.
Production:
As I began production, I first followed the floor layouts above to make a basic model of the gallery, extruding and separating the display cases along the way. Following online tutorials, I discovered how to easily create stairs using bevel options. Afterwards, I followed a tutorial on creating a rope bridge using geometry nodes to create the Golden Gate Bridge themed handrails. I also modeled a few small benches placed in front of the “video projections” for hypothetical exhibit-goers to sit and watch the videos. With these steps complete, I had the main components of the exhibit created. I then assembled the separate pieces to recreate my sketched model.
I then moved on to texturing and lighting the exhibit. I primarily used area lights throughout the exhibit and within the display cases. For the glass in the display case, I simply turned the transmission of the material to its fullest and roughness to 0, which created a glossy transparent effect. Many of the components were textured very simply, with minor changes to the materials color and roughness.
With the main exhibit completed, I moved onto modeling the display pieces. My first assignment was a sculpture of a Frozen Charlotte Doll, excavated by members of the Market Street Chinatown Project and displayed on their website exhibit. The website also had 6 other artifacts displayed: a rice bowl, an ornamental peach, a celadon spoon, a cooking pot, a toothbrush, and a medicine bottle. I had 5 spaces left within my display cases, and given my limited time, I chose to leave out the ornamental peach as it would’ve beenby far the most complex to model and texture. With myartifacts decided, I moved on to modeling and texturing them.
My original plan was to model the objects on Maya, send them to Mudbox to texture, then import them back into my Blender file. However, as I began modeling, I realized that I had become much more familiar with Blender’s UI and thus switched back to Blender for efficiency. After debating between texturing on Mudbox, Procreate, or Blender, I ultimately chose to continue my work in Blender as the process would be more streamlined. Revisiting a few tutorials, I learned how to use shader nodes to add image textures and texture paints to the models. Here is a basic rundown of each artifact’s process:
Rice bowl: Rougher material with noise texture for inside of the bowl, glossier material with gradient (created with colorRamp, mapping, and texture coordinate nodes) on the outside of the bowl. Patterns painted with texture paint.
Celadon Spoon: Noise texture with colorRamp to create celadon effect, texture painting at the edges of the spoon to create wear and tear effect.
Cooking Pot: Glossy black texture assigned to pot, few areas on the bottom assigned with rougher texture for wear and tear effect.
Toothbrush: Noise Texture and ColorRamp to create the main texture, holes and additional colors texture painted on.
Medicine Bottle: Changes in Transmission, Roughness, and Color on two separate layers of the bottle
In addition to the display case artifacts, I also added a map in the center of the room which could be viewed from the third floor. This map was added to a plane with an image texture node, and had its color edited with a colorRamp mode.
After adding these models to the display, I added in the “videos”. Since I didn’t plan to render a video, I simply added screenshots of the original videos onto a plane to represent them. I then put the planes in their designated areas, lowered their transmission slightly, and added another plane behind them with high emissions to create a glow effect.
Finally, I added text throughout the exhibit giving simple descriptions to its displays, and began rendering 8 still photos for the walkthrough. In my previous experiences, a still photo took around 15 minutes to render; this time, assumedly due to the amount of lights and textures, each still took around 40 minutes to an hour to render. After a few hours, the renders were completed (See Walkthrough Below):