Recreating Safe Space: Ice Jade Hall

A web version is hosted on New Art City Here.

Ideation

The idea of my final project is to rebuild a community space from a century ago digitally. This community is a group of women that refuses to get married in China, in the Pearl River Delta (珠三角). These women called the Comb-Sisters (自梳女) were able to be financially independent due to the bloom in the silk industry, thus they have the power to decide their own marriage. Since the decision of not getting married is against the tradition at that time, most family don’t support the decisions, so these women gather and donate money to build a community house for themselves.

As this community dies of, most of these houses are abandoned or turned into a museum. I want to recreate one of these houses to persevere it digitally and also provide a way people can explore and learn about the history of Comb-Sisters.

Process

Since the objective is to recreate an environment digitally, I wanted to employed the 3D modeling to a VR headset for people to be more immerse in the the setting. Also, in consideration of those who are uncomfortable, I made a web version as well.

This means that for the experience to be as smooth as possible to render in real time on the Meta Quest as well as the web, the models would have to be optimized with some comprise on details. The way I approach it is to make the model as low poly as possible and keep the UV map to two for the entire environment.

Modeling

I started out with compiling references that I can source online and organized the images on PureRef. The most prominent Comb-Sister community house that still remains, Ice Jade Hall (冰玉堂), is located in my hometown, Shunde, Guangdong, China. 

I then proceed to blocking out in Maya and gradually adding more details.

UV unwrap & Texturing

For the UV map, even thought might be sacrilegious, I overlapped the maps that I know would share the same textures. As for the texture, I have to use the original reference images that I have as textures with Photoshop.

Moving to Unity and the Web

After the model is prepared, I imported the fbx file to Unity. Within Unity, I used the XR tool kit to make the VR experience. Most of the interaction in are modified from the XR tool kit sample provided in the package, including the teleportation and clickable buttons. 

Similarly, on New Art City, I imported the mesh and added interactions that are provided to make sound and text triggers when user passed by an area.

To enhance the experience, I added my own recordings in Cantonese, in attempt to introduce the environment to the audience with English translation as text. The recordings are edited with Reaper.

The Showcase

For the experience in real life, I wanted two ways the audience can interact with. One being that the people can experience by walking physically in real live and moving in the virtual space, the other one is moving by controls for those who are comfortable. So I acquired a part of the hallway as my space for the show case.

For safety reasons, there are linings to guide the audience also to keep them within the boundary. However, there are some limitation for drawing the boundary in Meta Quest 3. Therefore, the audience who chose to walk still need to use the controls to move throughout the whole experience. 

Me guiding an audience through the walking experience