"The Corner"

NCSU Centennial campus Activation Space

North Carolina State University is installing a gathering and activation space for the campus community utilizing shipping containers. The graphic design team working on the project needed an application that would allow them to customize the interior and exterior look of each container. Using Blender, I built a digital model of the space according to the blueprints, a UV mapping system that would allow the graphic designers ability to create and switch out textures, and created documentation explaining it all.

Building the Scene

With assistance from Colin Keenan and Jeff Wilkinson, two other great multimedia artists, we built the Activation Space in Blender according to the blueprints and specifications provided to us. For ease and time, we downloaded basic shipping container models as well as furniture models to fit the vibe they wanted. We also got a 3D model of Centennial Campus to make the scene more accurate for visualization purposes.

UV Mapping System

The UV maps needed to be easy to understand and easy to use. I spent a couple of days figuring out the best way to unwrap the UV map of each container so that the graphic design team could overlay whatever design they wanted to on the containers, switch them out, etc. Thankfully, the containers were non-organic shapes and rectangular, so there wouldn't be too much warping. However, Blender gave me trouble with the UV maps anyway. My solution lied in Blender's UV unwrap "Project From View" tool, which saved me lots of time!

I made UV map templates for the graphic designers to use, as well as an example texture for one of the containers to display how the system works.

The guide I wrote explains how to edit the UV map in photo-editing software such as Photoshop, how to import and load it into Blender as a textured material, and how to render high quality images from Blender. I also installed pre-set cameras with optimum angles in case whoever used the application didn't want to create their own.

Rendering

I rendered out the scene with different views to show off how the project could look. Everyone was very happy with how they turned out!