>> Jeffrey Yoo Warren:
I'm Jeffrey Yoo Warren,
Innovator in Residence
at the Library of Congress,
and I'm going to show
you how to use lighting,
textures and effects like fog
to create an emotional tone
in the scenes, you create.
Atmosphere.
If you've gone through the
earlier parts of this guide,
you may have a 3D
model of a building
or a part of a neighborhood.
But in your modeling
program, you might feel
that the scene lacks something,
that it doesn't jump out at you
like a memory or a real place
you could imagine
yourself within.
In this part of the Relational
Reconstruction Toolkit,
we'll be focusing on
creating emotional space through
lighting, weather, textures
and even movement.
For this part of the guide, I've
worked with Alicia Renee Ball,
a multidisciplinary artist
and designer, to explore
how to create a sense of place
and space through dynamic world
building for our
reconstruction models.
The kinds of atmospheric
effects will show help to create
evocative moments like in our
strongest memories, the quiet of
a snowstorm or the
feeling of a rainy day.
Lighting is the first and maybe
easiest way you can give your
scene some emotional tone.
Think about sunrise or
sunset or other times of day
which stand out in your memory.
Maybe an especially hot
day or even a snowstorm.
Simple lighting
effects can be added
in the Mozilla Hubs
editor Spoke,
like point lighting for lamps
or light bulbs or
ambient light or sunlight.
You can even
animate falling snow
using a component called
a particle emitter.
We'll talk about
this a little later.
But to create more complex
kinds of atmospheric effects,
you'll need to use
a rendering program.
I used Blender, which
is free and open source.
For me, it's been a challenge
to represent these spaces
because I've found few
photographs of interiors and
even fewer of the people
who lived and worked here.
It doesn't make sense to fill
these buildings with fictional
people, but neither has it felt
right for them to be empty.
One way I've thought to give a
sense of people's presence has
been to evoke a sense
of warmth and comfort.
Wet streets, rain and fog
contrast with warm indoor lights
to create a sense of
shelter and enclosure.
And visitors have remarked that
they felt physically warmer upon
coming inside out
of the virtual rain.
I was inspired by Alicia Renee
Ball's 3D design work because of
her powerful use of color,
texture and composition.
In addition to her interest in
history, identity and place.
Next, she'll show some of the
ways she's incorporated more
advanced atmospheric effects
into a scene in Blender.
>> Alicia Renee Ball:
Hi, my name is Alicia
and I'm going to demonstrate
how I used Blender
to world build
digital environments.
I've chosen to use a 3D model
that I created through
a technique known
as photogrammetry
for this portion of the guide.
If you would like to
know more about this
technique for making 3D models,
please see the notes
written in our guide.
This model is a reconstruction
of a big timber log cabin found
at the historic site New Echota.
Before forced removal
by the U.S. government,
new Echota was the
capital of the Cherokee Nation
in the early 19th century
in the state of Georgia.
This area of Georgia is the
home of the Koasati,
Miccosukee, Yuchi and
Cherokee Indigenous Peoples.
I've been studying the
histories of Black people who
lived under enslavement in this
area and who later would be
known as the Cherokee Freedmen
following the Civil War.
Their stories are a part of the
complex history of this place.
And this cabin shares some
similarities with what their
homes may have looked like.
For me, this provides a partial
glimpse of how they might have
lived during this era and is a
part of my journey to learn more
about their lives.
As you see from my model, it is
already skinned with a texture
from the photogrammetry process.
Then I'm going to create a
landscape for the log cabin to
sit upon by adding a plane
and using it as our ground.
I wanted to add depth and
dimension to the ground plane
instead of leaving it flat.
This will help us to create a
dynamic sense of place that
mimics the variety of
landscapes found
in the natural world.
As I created height and
depth on my surface plane,
I made sure to examine it
from all directions, tweaking it
until it felt and
looked just right.
Next to bring to life the
digital environment I am
building, I will be
adding in a skydome
to naturally light up our scene.
Although it was midday,
clear and sunny when I
first visited New Echota to
capture the footage of the log
cabin from my reconstruction
model, I wanted to create an
environment that would
evoke more emotion
and a sublime sense of mystery.
To do that, I decided
to set my scene at sunset.
Now I will pick a texture
material that will best
represent from memory
the texture of the ground
at the historical site.
I'm utilizing texture maps
from a subscription based
service called Polygon.
For your worldbuilding
exploration, you can find free
textures and HDRIs to use
through a simple web search.
From this point on, I will be
worldbuilding through what I
describe as the
speculative imagine.
How can I reimagine and
rebuild parts of a real place
that will evoke more emotion and
a deeper connection
to its histories?
For me as an experimental
artist and designer,
I do this through
playing with Mood.
To help me build a more
expansive world,
I will experiment
with mood building
through lighting,
color and movement.
To do this, I have imported
additional models into the scene
to better flesh
out the environment.
The 3D models I'm currently
using, I have downloaded from
Polygon. Again, for your world
building reconstructions,
you can find a plethora of
free CAD resources online.
Pick the models that will best
speak to the world you are
building and reconstructing.
So as you can see, I imported a
few tree stumps, a chopped log
and a living tree.
These items are in dialogue
with one another, showcasing the
various stages of life, death
and transition through the use
of natural resources to
sustain a modern world.
From living trees to
chopped tree stumps
in transition to a log cabin.
Creating a narrative or working
poetically in the digital
environment she build also adds
to the dynamism and
emotion of place and space.
To create more spatial
depth in the scene,
I have imported a horizontal
image of barren trees with a
transparent background
to serve as our backdrop.
This imagery of barren trees
creates a sense of coldness in
our built digital environment
because it reminds
us of the transition
between seasons from summer to
fall and from winter to spring.
Now I want to explore how the
use of moving light particles
can add an ethereal, dreamly
and otherworldly aspect
to our environment.
I will explore this concept
through creating an
animation of sauntering
fireflies that will dance,
float and flutter
throughout the scene.
We will create these dancing
fireflies through the use of a
particle system in Blender.
We will use our ground plane as
the source that will generate
the tiny orbs of light
and then we will animate it
through the use of a
physics system called Boids.
Particle emitters
can also be used
to create rain or
snow in a scene.
If you want to know more
about how to create
a particle system
like we did in Blender,
please see the notes
in our written guide.
We decided to use the Boid
system to simulate the flight
and the flutter of the
fireflies, whose blooming light
will add further
ambience to the scene.
The Boid system generates
a natural flight trajectory
for our fireflies.
Finally to turn up the drama,
mood and mystery
in this scene, we will also
explore important atmospheric
fog into our environment.
Now I will tweak the settings
to increase the density, depth,
visibility and color of the fog
to create varying moods for our
speculative scene of new Echota.
In my art practice, I enjoy
infusing cosmic drama
into the worlds that I build.
And I do this mostly through
overlaying and
merging of colors.
This creates a hazy
environment of floating auras
that coat our sky and changes
the dynamic of the scene
depending on the
density level of the fog.
Here is the end result of my
speculative play.
And another way you can create
emotional space in the
worldbuilding development of
your relational reconstructions.
Thank you.
>> Jeffrey Yoo Warren:
That wraps up this tutorial.
For more information, you can
see the written guide online.