Experience Type: Interactive Web3D Experience
Role: 3D Designer, Production Artist & Supervisor
Platform: Desktop, Mobile & Tablet Devices
Built Using: ReactJS
Additional Tools: Blender 2.8, Substance Painter & ThreeJS Editor
The experience was built for Godrej, an Indian multinational conglomerate, based in Mumbai, India. 3D Design and Production for the experience's first installment was completed in early 2022.
The clients required the design and development of a 3D interactive web experience that would serve as a virtual showroom to showcase their products, with the feature of viewing it in 3D space.
The work done for the project involved designing and producing high quality 3D environments that were optimized for both desktop and mobile viewing.
IDEATION
“The environment was to be a canvas to showcase the aesthetic and design of the products.”
While it was important to design and light the environments to look realistic and aesthetically pleasing, the products needed to be visible to the user.
Above: Using a dark wood material to highlight the product.
Colour contrast was one of the techniques employed to make the products stand out in the composition and draw attention to them.
Above: A design for a showroom based on simple geometry and the use of exposed concrete and wood as defining materials.
The 3D environments predominantly featured a neutral colour palette to prevent the colours of the environment from eclipsing the products. Concerning materiality, wood, exposed concrete and white plaster were used to give a minimalistic but sophisticated look to each of the showrooms.
DEVELOPMENT
“3D production was done using Blender with the scene lighting iterated using a custom-made prototyping tool.”
The production of the 3D environments was done using Blender. The software was used to model, texture and execute a preliminary lighting setup.
The environment was textured using texture atlases to reduce the number of draw calls and the overall file size.
Above: A screenshot of the 3D modelled environment in Blender.
Above: Modified HDRIs used for environment lighting.
To ensure that the exported files were optimized in terms of file size, the 3D models were exported in the GLTF format with texture files converted to WebP file format.