Author: Xinran Li

Title: Building Fan in Song Dynasty

Inspiration:

Building Fan was a famous building in Song Dynasty. We found this painting by Xiaoyou Zhang, which was painted by 1994. So we decided to build a scene based on this building. Ideally, the scene may looks like this:

There will be 2 main buildings based on water in the middle, gate facing the pavilion, corridors around the building.

We are going to do the modeling in Maya, and use SP to paint the textures. We want to make real textures, which may take us a lot of time on it.

Finally, We are going to put the objects into UE5 and finish building the whole scene. Since there are a lot of 3D references we can use in UE5, it can save us a lot of time to build the whole scene, add elements into it.

Meanwhile, we are also going to render the scene in UE5. We want to render both the daytime and the nighttime of the scene.

Here is the storyboard:

Schedule:

Weekly schedule for modelling:

Blue color: me | Purple color: Shuang

Finally, it comes to the end. I created 5 cameras to show the room and the details of the objects.

The projects looks so far so good, anyway, I hope I can keep on working on this scene in the future. There are still a few things I haven’t down, for example, I haven’t build the city and houses outside the room. What’s more, I can add birds or other creatures to the scene.

All in all, I learned a lot and praticed a lot while doing this project. I proved my skill for modelling and texturing a lot. However, there are still many things I can improve in the future. I want to work more efficiently, build more complicated models, make better and detailed textures, etc. This project helped me found enthusiasm and happiness when doing it, I really enjoyed and I will keep working in this direction, try to become a good 3D Artist.

This is the final video to show the room:

This week, I continued to add textures to the models, meanwhile, I added details to the room.

Finally, the room looks like this:

Last bust not least, I animated the fan, the wind chime, the cloud and the sea.

For the plants and the flowers, I used the shape editor to show the sway of them.

I created the sea and the sky this week. I followed instructional video on Youtube, which were really helpful.

For the sea, I created a plane, assigned new material and added noise to the bump mapping, adjusted the attributes.

Create clouds

Add 3D Container

Maya ran really slow when I was trying to have a preview of the rendering, there was too much things to calculate. I tried several ways to make it faster. However, those didn’t really help. Anyway, the situation became better after I created the maya fluid and rendered it out.

Create New Cache – Maya Fluid

Add lights

I added a skydome light and two directional lights from behind and the front.

A short demo at this stage

Added more textures

For polygons which are going to have same textures, I gave them same aiStandardSurface. This may help me a lot when I make textures in Substance.

This week I started to make other models in the room, add details to the room.

I started with building the railiing.

Meanwhile, I also added textures to the door, table, floor and also other models with wood textures.

Due to limited time, for the plants and flowers in the room, I downloaded from online and made adjustments to them.

Created the wind chimes

This week I continued to build the scene from last week

Firstly, I started to model a book.

I deleted the faces of the book edges and connected the edges. After that, I filled the hole and extruded the faces.

I also began to add textures to the models this week. I used substance and photoshop to make the textures.

For the door, I firstly created several cubes and duplicated them.

I also built a fan.

Duplicate

Made a lantern

1. What you’re researching? how you’re researching it? & why it is important to research this subject?

I’m researching how environmental protection reflect in games. By looking through books, articles, videos, playing environment games.

By researching this subject, not only can environmental gaming be a force for good, it’s fun and accessible to a huge range of people worldwide.

2. Provide at least 5 keywords

Environmental Protection, Environmental Gaming, Serious Games

Marine Protection, Global Warming, Plastic Pollution

3. Provide at least four sources, debates or texts in the subject area and a short explanation of the relevance to your project proposal

20 Incredible Environmental Games from the Last Decade | Chaos Theory (chaostheorygames.com)

Gaming for the Planet: 19 Video Games with the Environment at Their Heart – Means and Matters (bankofthewest.com)

7 Environmental Games Helping Save Our Oceans | Chaos Theory (chaostheorygames.com)

These incredible environmental games have shown benefits and impacts among environmental protection.

“They’re part of a broader genre of games called serious games.”

What is serious games?

“Serious games are games with a primary purpose that goes beyond entertainment. Serious games can tap into our human motivational needs to change behaviour. They create strong emotional memories and transform complex concepts into first-hand experiences.”

HCI in Games: Serious and Immersive Games: Third International Conference, HCI-Games 2021, Held as Part of the 23rd HCI International Conference, HCII 2021, Virtual Event, July 24–29, 2021, Proceedings, Part II

On page 96, it introduces a serious game which is called “Animals Go Home”, it explains how environmental protection reflects in the serious game, how the game is designed and the influence it has brought to the society.

This week I started to model this part.

I created several cubes and duplicated several times.

I create a cylinder and used lattice to adjust the shape.

Created a box

Created a pencil

How the scene looks at the current stage