Personal Development Project

For this assignment I simply continued working on my personal project that I had started outside of university. Creating a 3D rendition of my home town Liepaja (Libau), in an attempt to revive the atmosphere and the architectural treasures lost in WW2. I started on this last summer in 2020, as I was stuck, bored, in my tiny room in Belfast. It was a huge learning experience for me at the time since I had only done 3D since the February of 2020.

I created these buildings just using textures from textures.com and using very basic skills I had at the time to just brute force these buildings into existence, doing a million loop cuts to create windows, and never cleaning up the geometry. As the year turned over into 2021 I learned that I would need to work on a personal development project for university and I decided I could redo this same blender scene, except now I had made a major university project that involved making buildings, so I had learned quite a bit since my last attempt.

Started by recreating the iconic corner building from my home town Liepaja that sadly hasn't existed since 1941. Learned new techniques in 3D modelling, and had been collecting a lot of old photos to use as reference, piecing together bit by bit, where the old buildings used to be, as today, the town center is completely different.

Started work on smaller items as well, fairly early on, such as this model of a tram. I used the collection of old photos to spot trams.

(Finished models) I started working on more buildings, populating the area with more structures. Mind you, this was after I finished my part in the group project so I only had about a week to do about half of the work left. But this is my passion project and I decided to pour as much love and work into it as I humanly could. I knew I didn't need to have a big, grand final outcome for this, just something of substance to showcase.

After I finished this, the House of the Latvian Society, one of the few buildings that still exists,

My attempt to figure out where the old street layout used to be, and where the old buildings were, based on the old photos in my collection.

My mother also bought me this book. It is a big book full of architecture examples, plans, and even old maps, all from my home town.

And this book titled "Walk along the beautiful Liepaja" A photo book, loaded with old photos of my home town from before the war. And this is where many of my reference photos come from.

Started adding in some greenery, to where the central park is supposed to be. In the old German post cards the park is called 'Rosen Platz' because of the rose garden in the middle. Today it is still called Rožu Laukums in Latvian, which still translates to "Rose place"

The trees are just simple blobs with a hedging texture from textures.com, and the other more realistic tree props I did borrow from 'Aurora' on Sketchfab.

(colourized old photo)

I started adding in the vehicle models I have been working on as well, specifically for this project. Ford Model A and Ford Model T for this environment showcase specifically. I used Pinterest to gather reference photos for 1930s cars

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/roadkillfoxart/30s-cars/

Ford Model A

Ford Model T

the row of taxis at the northern tip of the park, where they usd to queue up for customers.

Tram model, next to the corner building, in front of the park. The road texture is paving stones from CC0 texture library. I think it looks exceptionally good.

Below you can view the environment showcase. Sadly it wouldn't export correctly and I ended up with a choppy video. But it still showcases my 3D models, so I feel it's good for what it's worth.

This project has taken so much energy. As I write this blog tonight (May 13, 2021) I am aching all over, from working up to 14 hours per day on this. In the middle of this semester I thought I could maybe change it up, to something easier, something smaller. But that something smaller ended up being too big still. In my 1-to-1 session with Michael O’Callaghan, I ended up realizing that I could not do an animation within the time I had left. Sadly I had to give up on a fan animation I thought about doing for a music video of a Latvian musical artist I follow. So in the end, I decided to go back to my 1930s town project, and worked hard. And looking at all my work, it is almost unbelievable that I really did so much. I really made the entire central park area and even populated it with some vehicles and plants. I made the classis mistake of putting this project off until I was finished with assignment 1, and had to work overtime to get it done. But I am actually very happy with how the environment turned out. Sadly I could not figure out hardware and software issues out in time to correctly render the video for this environment, so the final render came out a bit choppy. I will attempt to render it again, later, and see if I can get the choppy freezing to stop and come out smoothly. I will continue working on this project, give each and every building a lower poly version, to use with Unreal's LOD system, once I can upgrade my computer, and actually start turning this into an environment that is rendered in real time. I am hoping to one day use this as a game map, for a video game set in 1930s Latvia. But that is for the future. For now I am going to focus on seeking industry placement, perhaps getting some form of income going, and try to purchase a new machine to be able to work on bigger projects more easily, as my current laptop has been givig its best and working overtime just like me. In the end, I am very very proud of my work, and I am very happy with the outcome.