Prototype
This document aims to describe the full process of creating fully- procedural 3D, using Houdini and Substance Designer. Luckily, Houdini creates meshes and also generates polygon groups, which allows for an automatically unwrapped UV-s. Textures are first baked in Houdini while the model and the base mashes are linked to Substance Designer. Using both Houdini and Substance Designer, textures are generated.
Stakeholders in this project include Det Norske Teatret, a prominent cultural institution based in Oslo, Norway, which has assigned us this task. Det Norske Teatret is a theater dedicated to delivering exceptional theatrical experiences to its audience. Established in Oslo, it holds a significant place in the Norwegian cultural landscape, with deep-rooted traditions and a focus on promoting the Norwegian language and culture. Founded by industry veterans in the world of theater, Det Norske Teatret maintains strong connections with the local artistic community in Oslo. The theater's primary mission is to produce and stage performances that celebrate Norwegian culture and heritage.
Assignment:
"Create an immersive theatre installation on the concept of AI, where the audience can participate and immerse themselves in the experience and start conversations about the future of AI"
Goals:
Incite discussions about AI with the visitors.
Try and bridge a connection between the user and the AI
Create a way to explore technological topics artistically.
Motivate new audiences to visit the theatre.
Problem:
As a concept artist who strives to achieve a more efficient workflow, I will be creating a more efficient workflow that allows for easily tweaked 3D objects with many variations.
Main part:
As a game artist, the need to model similar assets repetitively is quite common. Since many assets follow a similar pattern, there is a need for automating the process. To get started, using Houdini and focusing on the geometry is a key. The primary tool of choice is the PolyExtrude node. This tool offers two key features: complete control over the extrusion process, including thickness, direction, and divisions, and the capability to generate polygon and edge groups based on the extrusion. These groups gives the flexibility to easily manipulate specific parts of the model, allowing us to achieve the desired shapes.
The general goal is to create a model of a courtroom that is going to be one of the two main visuals for the immersive experience. The main 3D assets needed for that scene will be chairs, desks, and some additional details that will be added later in the process.
Starting with a simple object such as a witness stand can prove to be a good idea since the shape is boxy and there are not many details that can be added. The witness stand will be based on concept art with inspiration taken from a picture of an American courtroom(Figure 1).
As for now, it is not clear if the art style of the scene will be more stylized than realistic, so the following model is made, based on photorealistic images of a witness stand. Moreover, the goal for this 3D asset is to be as tweakable as possible, so even if the style shifts hopefully it can be tweaked manually without needing to create a whole new asset.
Figure 1: Stylesheet with different ideas for witness stands in various styles
After completing this mood board and talking with the rest of the team, we all came to a decision that since the play comes up more modern, it might be a good idea to tweak the design for the desk a little bit, so it appears more futuristic.
Note: The design I will be showing is not complete, I concentrated more on the procedural part, rather than on the design itself, more designs will be shown later in the process.
For the creation of the witness stand my main goals were to have the 3D model be as procedural as possible, add controls so the model is easily tweaked, and achieve a decent UV map through nodes instead of manually UV mapping the asset.
The first step, setting up the project
As for the start, the best thing I figured was to take the general shape and break it into features as a start, considering the general shape – in this case starting from a curve so we can manually change the shape of the object
Each node modifies different objects and creates groups of the objects by itself, so to make them easy to change, they might need some tweaking.
To extrude we need a normal, extrusion mode that uses normal vectors, which face up, if not we need to make our vector with attribute to create a node with vector type, and values should be set to y with 01. in direction;
With a poly extrude node we add some height to the existing geometry. From this point on it was mainly using extruded nodes to add more dimension and details to the model.
Note: Split node is designed to divide your geometry into two separate streams, the portion that matches the group and the portion that doesn’t. After learning about this node I decided to change my approach based on this finding.
After completing all the separate elements I combined them and made null parameters with which the procedural adjustments to the desk can be made such as level of detail, width, and height of the desk among others.
The final look of the witness stand:
Functionality demonstration:
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