3D modeling software is nowadays the standard product architects and landscape architects use to design and communicate their envisioned designs to non-experts in the field. However, these platforms provide the designer with a highly abstracted environment to work with spatial geometry, usually from unnatural points of view to the human scale such as bird’s eye, thus warping the designer’s perception and understanding of their creation. A new approach to this design paradigm is rising from bringing video game technology, the so called game engines, into the production of 3D navigable environments for the purpose of conveying architectural experiences.

These experimental techniques are opening a vast space for enhanced design opportunities, when seen beyond mere representational tools and fully understood as a new modeling environment. The aim of this project was to create a prototype of a topography sculpting platform, with special stress on the human scale and nature’s logics. The ambition is to impart the designer with an understanding and experience of being in the landscape that they are designing.

The rules for this platform are:

– User interaction with the environment is strictly be bound to the first person view, fostering the understanding of the environment through the human scale.

– User movements is also bound to real scale velocities, such as walking, running or driving, further enhancing a scaleful dynamic relation to the topography.

– Topography sculpting tools are related to nature, and they come in the form of water, rain, erosion, rifts, etc.

– Geometry is exported for communication with other platforms.

This is an interface that allows for less intrusive or disruptive interventions to a given landscape model. Consequently, as opposed to conventional modelling commands (extrude, loft, trim, etc.) which are scaleless and devoid of physical constraints, this platform instead provides modelling commands that emulate natural processes. This allow for a more visceral and meaningful relationship between the designer and the landscape of interest.

An additional focus is placed on modes of representation. As opposed to commercial model visualization packages like Lumion, this platform is more interested in abstraction over photorealism. It provides a series of preset view modes intended to evoke a more qualitative understanding of the environment. Additionally in further iterations, the platform will support anaglyphic stereoscopy for enhanced spatial perception.

The player shows up on a barren landscape of roughly 1000×1000 meters, with a soft perlin-like profile. Direct terraforming interaction with the terrain is available at real-time scale by means of a cursor with variable size, and simple push/pull terrain capabilities.

The player is also invested with the power of planting seeds, as a metaphor for triggering natural geomorphosis phenomena which will affect the terrain at geologic-time scale. Two types of seeds are available: mountains and water. Mountain seeds trigger the growth and formation of terrain peaks, that evolve over geologic-time in a stochastic unpredictable way, fading its actions over the course of the aeons.

Mountain seeds and terraforming at geological-time scale

Water seeds trigger the creation of a water stream that follows the natural flow lines of the terrain, eroding it and, in turn, modifying its own trajectory over time.

Water flows and basin formation

Furthermore, over geologic-time scale, a natural process of erosion caused by wind, rain, vegetation, etc., affects the terrain, causing its surface to evolve dynamically as a consequence of user-based interactions and nature forces.

Mountain formation and erosion

Sandbox is a collaboration with Nathan Melenbrink at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

This project is open source, and you can fork it from our repo: https://github.com/garciadelcastillo/sandbox