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Premise "Create, explore and trade in the first-ever virtual world owned by its users." With this welcoming sentence Decentraland invite us to dive into one of the first blockchain-backed platforms that enhances an alternate reality to express our ideas and projects into the world. Launched in February 2020, Decentraland has seen its potential grow exponentially as different blockchain-related companies and projects have placed a headquarter or contact point to connect bridges with their audience among the metaverse.
 Finding the headquarter purpose Ahh, yes here we are at the start point of this journey. When it comes to develop buildings with a specific goal we must ask first what is going to be used for and the initial division of their space and how much space do we have. Two words: What and Where. What does this building gathers? Nugget's News had a clear vision on how its content had to be divided and placed:
 Where is this building at? Having our general info distribution by floors, we had at our disposal a 2x2 LAND state at Decentraland, these meant:
 Initial ideas, visual conceptualization The project came in to modernize a previous building designed for the same purpose, but the client wanted a more unique approach rather than a realistic building one.
When it comes to unleashing imagination. You don't have to care for concrete covers, pipes or electrical equipment. There is not such thing as supporting pillars or weight constrains and everything you make it has a purely esthetical reason. Basically:
Following the need to modernize its appeal, for this project we played with the idea of having a hangout area, learning place and screening place in a building that had a sobriety but elegant design. We chose modernist architecture as a main reference and mixed it with the idea of a giant logo surrounding the building.   Blockout, helpful space design After the references have been set, it's key to start developing a mock-up or quick model that draws the volume boundaries of the building and mixes properly what we want (#00) and how we want it (#01) based on the purpose of the building and the references chosen.  This give us a proper shot to iterate on and we can start trying it out in-engine to match sizes. Also it gives us a scope on how many objects do we have to craft and anticipate some possible constrains based on our goals. From this blockout we extracted specific references for chairs, counters and every visual needed. It was time to get into shapes. Shape development As every shape gets developed individually or along the other props in the same floor, the project starts to approach a critical state, where composition has to be remade or tweaked to have a beautiful interior and exterior design.  As every shape gets developed individually or along the other props in the same floor, the project starts to approach a critical state, where composition has to be remade or tweaked to have a beautiful interior and exterior design. After different iterations and redesigns we get to the final design. All running in engine.  After we have all shapes made and initial composition set, it is time for us to go to the next step, design materials and apply them. Material design and Animation execution As we said before, the Nugget's News building look comes from a Modernist architecture with some art-touch made by us. This means that the building has to be mainly using "modernist-like" materials such as concrete, clean wood, painted steel, brushed grey iron and a little bit of marble. But we cannot forget this is a corporate building, so we have to mix those ideas with matching colours from the colour palette of the Nugget's News website. This is basically a palette of 5 blues and a coral variant made for contrast with the rest of the components. Both main ideas mixed together result in the following material (excl. Albedo dyes)  Of course, creating materials is not a one shot job, we have to iterate and local-deploy constantly to reach the result we want and at the same time play with all the constrains, this means that we have to cleverly reuse all the materials along the building and minimize those that can only be in one place or are too specific. Apply different materials in different polygons set in the same mesh and etcetera.  An example on material design evolution is the wall (and floor) of this room and how it evolves until it gets nailed. Regarding Animations, this is something I was kind of thrilled to see done, the idea with the Nugget's News immense logo being animated and morphing during the whole experience. We found pretty interesting that the shape of the logo has an almost continue tileable curvature, so we could play with it and invert the curvature as an animation, making the logo continuously loop non-stop by just morphing.  A concept made to understand how the logo should deform, it exploits the fact that it already has a "natural" curvature and inverts it seamlessly. Technically it is something difficult to get right as the rig has to be correctly executed to drag properly the vertex by animation with the simplest model complexity possible. But once we have it right and complete the animation, we can have our hands on the next step, color and UV mapping.  UV mapping this was something we came as the NN shape came along, as the logo itself is made out of triangles this benefits us and we can make the whole texture with a two gradients: one for blue to light gradient triangles and other for blue to dark gradient triangles.  Determining info, labels and other communications Once the composition and all the visual aspects of the scene are ready to evaluation and have been checked in-engine, it is time to get our hands on designing information areas. We now basically are creating a good user experience by deep thinking and assess how the design will be experienced and ensure the best experience. This means to place everything in a way that is not tedious for the player.
 A welcoming area, with out-links that take the user to other places related with the company, like Twitter or Web.  Multiple panels that can be a calendar of events, a motif of the company or just general info about its activity.  In the second floor is placed a second welcoming counter as the floor content is related but with a different mission, if we want the player to feel welcomed and understand what's going on this is the best way. Also there is again another link board so this connection is always close to the experience of the user.  Different panels with different boards to explain specific materials and contents about the company are placed along the second floor in independent cubicles.  Each cubicle has its own "Learn more" so the player goes directly to the expanded content related to what it's being told.  A mid-floor between Floor 2 and 3 was set to amplify the use space and maintain everything airy.  During the whole displacement along the levels, you can see where are you heading.  A general view of the conference area, spacious and set to gather big meetings with announcements or "Ted talks".  And a viewpoint on the same stage. Conclusion Once everything is in place and with the correct information set, there is nothing more to do but to upload our content to the metaverse and let the people experience it.
This project has given us a fantastic opportunity to create a headquarter that had no relation with our daily work, as we are involved indirectly with cryptocurrencies but we focus in 3D developments and experiences. I do really hope to get my hands again on such different things as building the worlds others imagine.
2 Comments
Fouad
9/14/2021 08:32:23 am
Great summary about this project. I'd like to get in touch with you about an upcoming similar project where we need a corporate building and other type of buildings for Decentraland. Leave a Reply. |
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