Odyssey in Chinese Ink Painting
"Odyssey in Chinese Ink Painting" is a 360° VR interactive digital art experience. Through this immersive media, audiences are invited to the world of Wu Guanzhong. Wu is one of the most famous contemporary Chinese Painting artists who had a huge contribution to Singapore Art. This work incorporates technologies and art to reintroduce the Forgotten Art in Singapore — Chinese Ink Art.
Type
Immersive 360 Experience
Year
2022
Skills
User Interface/ User Experience, Interaction Design, Virtual Reality/ Augmented Reality, Programming (C#)
Softwares
Unity; Wix; Nomad; Procreate; Blender; Mental Canvas; InstaStudio; Youtube; Adobe Photoshop; Adobe Premiere Pro
Odyssey in Chinese Ink Painting originates from the lack of interest in Chinese Ink Painting among Singapore youth. With weaker command of the Chinese language as compared to English, the youth is less capable of recognizing, understanding and growing interest in traditional Chinese Ink Art. The beauty of artistic conception in Chinese Ink Art is not easily appreciated by a beginner and is at risk of slowly fading away from our mainstream cultural heritage. The goal of this project is to build a bridge to connect the younger generation with Chinese Ink Art heritage. To capture their interest, I utilise new media tools that Singapore youth are more familiar with. Through the re-enactment of master ink art in a digital innovative way, the audience can be inspired by the painting and expand their aesthetic sense. Hence, this cultural heritage will continue to flourish in our current and future generations.
Project Execution
Odyssey in Chinese Ink Painting consists of three main parts: the interactive experience, website and installation. I encountered most challenges during creating the interactive experience that required referencing Wu Guanzhong’s painting to create 3D models.
Software Selection
The construction of the 3D world consists of 3 main steps: 3D models, placement of models
and coding of movement in Unity game design engine. I learnt 3D modelling from scratch for this final year project. The learning path is steep to learn professional PC digital modelling software in depth within a timeframe. Therefore, for efficiency and productivity purposes, I have mainly used iPad software Nomad and Procreate for 3D sculpting and colouring purposes, with open-source 3D computer graphics PC software Blender as assistance.
1. 3D Modelling + Colouring
a. Nomad (iPad): 3D Modelling
b. Procreate (iPad): Colouring/Drawing on 3D Models
c. Blender (PC): detailed colouring/ motion design
✖ MAYA: MNPR watercolour colouring plugin available for 2019 onwards versions
2. Layout/Experience Prototype
a. Mental Canvas: not supporting 3D modelling but good for sketching initial
prototype
3. World Building
a. Unity
General Import and Export Flow:
Modelling in Nomad; add in Smart UV layers for colouring purpose in Blender
Colouring in Procreate, only obj. format export available
Back to Blender to reformat from obj. to fbx. format animation
Import to Unity in fbx. format
3D Modelling and Sculpting: Nomad Sculpt
Every object was digitally crafted and sculpted in iPad software Nomad Sculpt, referencing Wu Guanzhong’s paintings.
3D modelling and sculpting process in Nomad
Digital Model Colouring Process: Procreate
3D models colouring process in Procreate
Constructing and Building World Structure
Unity game design software was utilized to construct the painting world. This project was
constructed using Unity render pipeline: Universal Render Pipeline (URP) that is artist-
friendly and supports optimised graphics. Besides the 3D models, an animated water plane and sky painted in 360 degree are required for basic setup of the world to resemble the river and sky of Wu’s Jiangnan landscape paintings.
Water Animation: Blender & Unity
When it comes to animate the river, I first tried to create it in Blender. Blender allows very detailed customisation of the visual presentation such as wave speed, wave size, colours, etc…The outcome was satisfied, yet it failed to import into the URP format project, without losing the colouring layer.
Creating animated water and water surface using Unity with coding
To resolve this problem, I tried to create the moving river in Unity with coding. This limited the chance of losing any details via the importing process and allowed me to test out the animation right after in Unity.
Sky Creation: Photoshop
In order to recreate the Chinese rice paper effect in 360°, a customised hand-painted 3D skybox was essential.
The 3D tool— spherical panorama serves the purpose of developing the skybox in 360°. To achieve such aim, guidelines were drawn to indicate the x, y, z axis of the visual. I had explored different photo adjustments, brushes and placements to finalise the designs.
Painting of skybox in Adobe Photoshop
Boat Movement: Unity with coding
Forward movement was coded to set the boat moved across the Z-axis along the riverside. Realising sole boat forward movement was not sufficient to simulate the boat ride scene, further detail adjustments were made through coding. Codes were to imitate the up-down floating movement when the scene was playing.
Codes for boat movement in Unity
Placement of 3D Model
Last but not least, the houses and people's 3D models were imported and placed with size adjustments along the river, referencing Wu’s Jiangnan painting.
Placement of 3D Models in Unity (different angles)
Final Outcomes
Interactive Experience
The 360° interactive experience was created using Unity, Nomad, Procreate and Insta360 Studio. It has been uploaded to Youtube for easy access on any Youtube compatible devices. In terms of viewing format, the audience could also choose to view it with the smartphone virtual reality headset for a more immersive experience. The headset is optional. Additionally, the audience can view it everywhere, even at home.
Website Design (UI/UX)
With the Covid Pandemic ongoing for two years since 2020, people have fewer opportunities to travel around. It is harder for the public to visit an exhibition carefreely. Therefore, the idea of hosting the booth both onsite and online gives chances for larger media exposure and could reach out to more audiences, either locally or world-widely. For art beginners to get to know about Chinese Ink Painting with ease. The website was created using Wix, the online website builder. It is compatible with any screen size. The website serves as an explanation of the project, for the audience to get to know more about background stories and a place to host the interactive experience.
This website serves as an explanation, giving the audience a clearer understanding and background of the project. It is essentially to achieve the ultimate goal: introducing Chinese Ink Art to young Singaporeans and growing their interests.
Sitemap of Website
Final Booth Setup
~End~ Thanks for reading
