Digital Dioramas

27 Oct 2020

Of the many crusades I have currently embarked on, the one of digital representation is quite important for me. Communities and cultures are not represented the way they'd like to be on the internet, especially with regard to documentation and media. This is particularly important for developing nations. A quick search for 'Afghanistan houses 3D' reveals structures primarily seen in video games such as Call of Duty or Counter-Strike, which is emphatically not a true representation of the country or its culture.

Kabul via arianews

I strongly feel there is a need to document and disseminate heritage and culture online that helps create an accurate representation of people and communities. This hasn't been possible for a long time as technologies and tools that allow for the creation of media have only been accessible by countries which are far richer (read: former colonialists). It's strange to think that a game designer in the U.S. creating 'Afghani' assets has been able to influence generations (plural) in their perception of a country and cultures.

Photogrammetry is one such tool which can help balance the inequality of access and power of digital representation. It's a technique that allows for the creation of high fidelity 3D models using nothing but traditional 2D photographs and a computer. Previously, prohibitively expensive 3D scanners and the respective skillsets were needed to create 3D models. But now, even I can make 3D models with nothing more than a smartphone and low-end laptop like a MacBook Air.

And so I did. I wanted to create small digital dioramas, to capture a scene, a place, a moment in time. A small scene meant to express a particular place. Using a combination of 3D, animation and sound to capture an experience. Every alternate day I visit a relatively unknown park in my city, which is a 5km walk from my house. It's about a 10km round trip to visit this hidden gem. Within this gem of a park there's a well, and a little shed. I like the feeling of sitting near the well, and just taking some time to enjoy being alone in a pocket of nature.

I started the process by taking photos of the space with my smartphone. I would use these images as the source data for the photogrammetry process. In all, I took about 105 images.

I used a software called Metashape to process these images to create a 3D model. This took quite a long time. More than half a day infact, and my laptop was completely unusable while it calculated a 3D model through the images.

Photogrammetry Process

I used a few preset trees, and after a lot more time unsuccessfully attempting to animate the trees in a natural manner, and failing to upload the resulting model to Sketchfab due to size issues, I resigned myself to simply rendering a 2D image of the diorama using Cinema4D. The intent was to create an audio-visual piece which would be representative of my experience of the space. But due to severe technical limitations and the lack of skills, I was unable to create it. A 2D render will have to do for now.

Render Process

Final Render