On this project I was with a group of people picked out from the Latvian Academy of Arts students with proficiency in 3D to work on developing a virtual exhibition during the Covid-19 pandemic, when in-person attendance was impossible. I worked mostly on optimisation of textures and 3D scans, as well as some modelling and texturing from reference. I was taken onto the project by Alvis Misjuns who was my professor at the time and I’m incredibly glad I agreed. Through the project I managed to make connections with people who I’m still close friends with many years later – big shout-out to everyone involved.
Processing 3D scans
Naturally, most websites aren’t too happy when each element in the scene is 40MB of spiderwebs. So a lot of reduction in terms of polygons happened. In fact most of the actual column part is work of the normal map. Some of the floor plan was also done for the prototype, so it took a lot of guesswork out of lining up all the new bits of mesh.
Texturing
At first a fairly slow process, it started to make sense more and more and it became a lot easier to think in terms of sprites and patterns. Soon enough what took up an entire 4k texture in the original could be reduced to a small square in the corner and repeated endlessly.
Final result
In the later stages of production, some things got merged, some cut, but as a whole I’m very impressed with the outcome of the project. It feels a little uncanny walking around the empty halls of it now, remembering it looking just as empty and quiet while I was there during the pandemic.
