Ege Ahmed | Axel Rasmussen | Samuel Kratzsch Chair of Architectural Informatics Technical University of VirtualMunich Art Museum
22 Virtual Art Museum Chair of Architectural Informatics Prof. Dr.-Ing. Frank Petzold Critical Modeling Ivan Bratoev, Nick Förster, Frank Petzold Ege Ahmed Axel Rasmussen Samuel Kratzsch ge69taq ga92yof ge35kod
3 1410864 TablePerformancePipelineDesignModelIntroductionDescriptionProcessofContents
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Placing the paintings into the exhibition space is a quite simple process due to the image properties. However, translating the sculptures into the virtual space is a more complicated and computationally expensive process(details on pipeline and performance section) In the pictures above is a sculpture by Schneweis. 3D modeling such detailed objects is a time consuming and difficult process, even more so with the group’s inexperience using Blender. Luckily, the resources sent by Schneweis also contains a 3D scan of one of her sculptures. Using this scan, it is possible to generate an 3D object fit for virtual reality. Having a virtual model also means that it is possible to scale and extrapolate the sculpture, giving the visitors a new perspective to experience the exhibition.
TheIntroductiongoalforthisprojectistocreateavirtual exhibition space for the artist Katinka Schneweis. The first requirement to realize it is to translate the artworks into the virtual space. Katinka produces works in many artistic disciplines, leading to creating a gallery complimenting each of those disciplines the priority. In the beginning the art inventory had paintings, sculptures and objects from different materials(e. g. fur). Due to performance issues with Mozilla Hubs, it has been decided to showcase just the sculptures and the paintings in the gallery.
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Theon. second part of the model is a large amphitheatre like room, with multiple rows for people to stand on, aswell as ways, leading from the entrance of this area to their center. The central area in this part is a stage, which allows for events to take place. For example interactions with the artist, or auctions for artworks, potentially as NFTs.
The centerpiece is a cylindric column with two spiral ramps, connecting the bottom with the top floor. The entrance to the model can be found at the bottom area, while the exit to the next area is located at the top. This part of the building, mainly contains pictures on the walls of the ramps, aswell as two artworks at the center of the column. The ramps allow visitors to experience the central artworks from as many points of view as possible, while having wall structures to place the 2D artworks
Model Description
The Model consists of two main parts.
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8 Moodboard and early sketches
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Design Process
The spirals allow to appreciate the painting displayed on the walls while also allowing the viewer to see the 3D floating sculptures from all possible angles.
Our design has a similar approach to displaying art as the one chosen for the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
It consists of two intertwined spirals that raise upwards and meet on the top of the cylinder that contains them. At the top, a platform forms allowing the visitors to go through the second parts of the artworks.
The platform where the two spirals meet, is also the previous room to the mail stage. This stage was conceived to be used for big online events, where new artworks could be presented and or auctioned, while allowing people to network and meet other online. We also planned to add more rooms in the future, with different room ambients and mood, that could possibly match the style of the artworks being displayed there.
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InPipelinethisproject,itwasarequirement
Rhino can only export as two extensions that is compatible with Blender, .obj and .dae respectively. First, we tried to use the .obj export. Although it is compatible with Mozilla Hubs, there is a critical problem with Blender. With .obj extension, the imported objects only have one face which is their whole surface area, rendering almost all texturing operations impossible. To get over that obstacle we exported .dae files from Rhino. With this format, it is possible to have the linear faces are distinct from each other. In addition to that it also provides an accurate approximation for round shapes such as spirals, dividing them into small rectangles. This property speeds up the texturing process substantially and makes working with higher precision possible. With this, the objects are completed in Blender and uploaded to Mozilla Spoke, an editing software for Hubs. After adding the art pieces into the exhibition space, Spoke generates a VR Room from the scene.
to make use of different software in various stages of development. First, Rhino has been used to create the first iteration of the exhibition space with chosen textures. Then Blender is used to fit and scale those textures and refine the objects and surfaces. Finally, the objects processed in Blender is uploaded to Mozilla Hubs, where the VR experience takes place. The reason for using Mozilla Hubs is the support for mobile phones
11 Finished model with textures in Rhino. Early stages of the model in Rhino, without textures.
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While Blender is also very capable of handling texturing operations completely on its own, doing the early steps on rhino has saved significant time and computation cost. In addition to that, doing the whole process on Blender provided some unexpected visual glitches which are significantly harder to rectify. On the other hand, post-processing objects in Blender significantly increases the quality and the performance of the scene.
Different artworks have been added to the exhibition space in different stages of development. It is possible to reconstruct the 3D Scan in the sculpture in Rhino. After modeling and scaling, the sculptures are added to the .dae file as a part of the art gallery. The paintings, however, are already present in high-definition PNG files. For that reason, they are added in the final stage in development, in Mozilla Spoke.
13 Sculpture before geometry simplification Sculpture after geometry simplification Blender screenshot Spoke
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InPerformanceordertomeasuretheperformanceofthe
Mozilla Hubs recommends having no more than 50.000 triangles in order to run smoothly in mobile devices.
On the other hand, it was not possible to reduce the size of pictures without a significant quality loss, so it has been decided to present them without any editing.
As you can see in the picture, the first iteration of the project has 1.466.648 triangles. The bulk of them comes from the two sculptures in the middle, due to the difference of complexity between them and the building. After using limited dissolve, the face count for the scene is reduced to around 525.000.
scene, Mozilla Hubs takes account of different properties.
As mentioned in the Pipeline chapter, Blender helps to create more detailed, smoother textures for the scene. One other use of this software is that it can reduce the face count of an object without any significant loss of quality (Limited Dissolve).
The main measurement for the performance is the polygon count of the scene.
The other measurements are, unique material count, texture size, number of light sources and overall file size. In the pictures below, you can see the data of our first iteration without any pictures or refined textures on the left, and the data of the final build on the right side.
1515 Performance before Performance after MozillaHub Screenshot
1616 Contact SEMMTKEgeAhmed036980446 SEMMTKAxelRasmussen036904722
1717 SEMMTKSamuelKratzschge35kod2
