My Role: 3D modeling, animation and rendering for room-scale projection, visualization

This work was part of a Winter Light Festival project with eTribe. The project was initially slated for the 2026 festival but was eventually postponed until 2027.

The project will be room-scale and will allow visitors to interact with projected images by moving around the room. Depending on their interactions, mushrooms will “grow” on the walls as projections, gradually filling the space.

All of the code and technical aspects for the interactions (as well as some associated particle effects) were handled by the rest of the team, as was the installation of the projectors and sensors. My focus was entirely on the imagery and animations for the wall projections.

The Setup

As soon as I knew the approximate dimensions of the room we would be using, I created a mockup of the walls and the projections in Blender. This allowed me to experiment with the look and feel of the projections without the projectors being set up in the physical space. It also allowed me to get feedback from the team without other team members needing to be in the space.

I began with some simple sketches. Did we want simple giant mushrooms on a dark background, or did we want a forest scene to contextualize them?

During this phase, I also did research on some visually interesting types of mushrooms that are native to the PNW region and ran a poll in the team Discord channel to determine everyone’s favorite fungi candidates.

We ended up settling on the forest scene. My next step was to get the scene mocked up in Blender so I could start experimenting with lighting and color.

Once I had a simple scene setup, I could quickly iterate on lighting schemes and material colors to create different atmospheres.

I also needed to set up the scene to render in a way that would look correct when projected. We wanted the camera to angle upwards slightly; this, plus the depth of field, would make the viewer feel like they were very small and near the ground level. To account for this, the rendered images had to be slightly warped to make them line up properly where the walls met.

The Scene

Once a color scheme had been selected, I added detail to the scene.

To make it reflect the forests of the Pacific Northwest, I knew I’d need to give the scene some serious texture. I did this by using physical media to draw swatches of texture and small, foliage-like shapes. I then scanned these images, turned them grayscale, and set them up to tile seamlessly where needed.

These become transparency maps, height maps, and additions to color maps in the materials of the forest scene.

The Mushrooms

The mushroom models needed to be the visual focus of the projections. We had specifically selected brightly-colored, visually interesting varieties so it would feel rewarding when visitors to the experience cause them to appear. I gave each mushroom type its own unique growth animation and set them up such that they could be placed anywhere in the scene.

This page will be updated in 2027 when the project is installed as part of the Winter Light Festival!