Digital Creative Reconstruction

DANIAL EZZATI: Welcome to Digital Creative Reconstruction, which focuses on preserving cultural heritage through technology. So let's start briefly about interaction about me. I'm Danial Ezzati. I recently graduated with MFA in digital media and design from University of Connecticut. I have over six years of experience in game design, VR/XR interactive media, and also, I'm experienced with multiple game engine and 3D software, such as 3D Max.

My artistic vision-- I'm focused in blending cultural heritage with cutting-edge technology to develop new generation of media. And also, I'm always passionate for innovative and rich interactive experiences.

My professional background-- toward this past year, I have graduate research assistantship with UConn. I collaborate with cross-functional team all across the campus, developing VR/XR and games with focus on entertainment and education. I had one-year internship position with Volvo designing XR product for them. I recently led a project that received NSF I-corps grant. And I'm currently a member of IGDA Foundation International Virtual Exchange Cohort. And as you've seen on the right side of the screen, there is a QR code that you could scan and know more about me.

So let's start with the agenda of this session. We will start with the project overview, and then we will talk about project methodology, a technical overview. Then after that, production highlight and after that conclusion, a future outlook. And last would be Q&A session.

So project introduction. The project I'm going to talk about is the first sample that created based on the framework that I call it digital and creative reconstruction. The name is TIME-- Journey to Nowruz. It's a first-person puzzle adventure game and also a VR experience that narrating culture historical story about my country and its focus on presenting Nowruz, the Persian New Year in its main core.

And actually, the name TIME is short for tangible interaction with Middle East. I'm going to cover it more later, but that's the main goal is to having a new content from misrepresented or underrepresented country. And I believe the region, Middle East, specifically, is full with this content. And as you see, there is a link to this project web page. So if you're interested, you could learn more about all these features that I'm going to cover later on in broad with you.

So this project goal-- the culture preservation. So what I try to do in this project, I try to use a cutting edge technology to suffer and environmental storytelling. To create a product that could save and present my culture. As I'm going to explain later, this phenomena happening in internet and digital work that is kind of needed for new kind of voice. And this project is aimed for that.

The narrow focus is educational focus. So this project is trying to be engaging, entertaining, but in the same time educating people about this new content that it delivers, an immersive learning. So I tried to combine all the elements from the gamified experience toward level design, architecture, environment. And the story and puzzle and all these elements converge together at the end to having immersive learning. So I try to use all the methodology that I learned this past years and new technology that I gained to combine them to have this goal works fine.

So the problem solving vision-- so the main idea is coming from that I came from Iran here in the US in this past four years. And I see this in digital work, what we suffering is that we don't have a content that could present our culture in any shape or platform that could bring a new kind of content. And I believe like a best way to connect people is towards celebration. That's what I mainly focus in this project.

And another thing is like the current world situation is not perfect. And if you search on Google, even about Iran, if you search the term Iran, it shows not many good news. But if you search like what Iran is famous for, it's bringing so many nice ideas of its culture, heritage sites, and it's known for its art, history, and tradition. So all of these things combined with the like huge number of immigrants happening all around the world, all people coming from Iran, bringing me this idea that I need to create a new product that could address all these problems.

So to briefly overview our learning objective is learn more about modeling techniques for the design of immersive environment storytelling and digital reconstruction projects. Learn strategies to use powerful technology for preserving and promoting culture, and learn how to design interactive experiences that educate and inspire culture. So all these elements are embedded in all next slides that we're going to cover.

So project methodology is the next slide. And this term that I'm always using is creative reconstruction methodology. So what that technically means? It means harnessing cutting edge technology and all the available information, and combine streaming core technology, art, and history in a way to create new content that are relatively historically accurate but also innovative and creative to present a new generation of media.

And why this created? So this concept, digital colonization-- in a brief word, it's misrepresentation or neglect the cultures around the world. I, as an Iranian person coming from a country that I often only see in the media, in the games, in the movies, my country and its main cores, such as our language, which is Persian or Farsi, or our main culture content being unfairly misrepresented and bring this misunderstanding.

Also, many art content are developed digitally, like in the games, that do not have its original text. So I believe because we don't have any voice in the world that present this content is coming from my country, and don't present its originality, in the long run is being forgotten-- what is urgent. And what is called digital colonization is actually making this situation.

And this cultural preservation and digital liberation happening while we have a framework that I personally customize and design called creative reconstruction methodology, which technically giving us an opportunity to create this product that acts against digital colonization and let us have a cultural preservation. Digital liberation.

I could pinpoint that many of artists and developers that come from this kind of misrepresented and underrepresented countries-- because of the lack of the information on the internet that we're going to cover later on, often we got frustrated, and we stopped creating content regarding our countries. And this is the new voice that could address that challenge as well.

So project mythology also-- I wanted to pinpoint that in this three way that combined together in the core structure of this project in three way technology. So specifically for this project, I use all the available technologies, softwares, and tools I found to create discontent.

Regarding art, I study all the art elements about my country-- architecture, mythology, culture, histories, stories, and all the art elements. And then I also gather information about my country history. All its elements, I combine together in a meaningful way to create this product and framework-- how to use all these elements in a meaningful way to create a new generation of interactive experiences.

So this project, Time-- Journey to Nowruz, using this framework-- digital creative reconstruction-- has the same process such as all other software developing in an industry. It is started pre-production, and then we have a production phase. And then at the end, we have a post-production. In detail, we're going to cover all the steps and how this creative reconstruction impact all this formal steps in industry from research, collaborating with cultural experts, development planning and then 3D modeling, level designing, VR and immersive experience, and gameplay interactivity, and at the end, optimization.

So pre-production. I started to do a comprehensive research. I look for all available content out there. And that was the first time I see the real impact of digital colonization. One aspect of it. In digital work, we have a lot of missing content. We don't have that much of reliable sources that we could use to create the content.

And same as for a lot of developers, I got frustrated. And how I could just gather all this needed information to build the foundation of this project? And the beginning of this methodology was like, I tried to use anything that's available. Before coming to AWS, I have my prior knowledge.

So I believe, like all developers, in part of their life, they live or their family member lived in the main country. So they could bring all these personal experiences combined with whatever is out there, which is relatively reliable, and in a meaningful way trying to develop this new content. That's why I call it creative reconstruction.

I tried to collaborate with experts. We had many sessions. Cultural and historical expert. We overview how we could make it work and how we could create this immersive experience about my country. And ideation and design thinking. So probably you have a glimpse of how chaotic was at the beginning-- like being lost among all these ideas of historical, cultural element. And I want to make a game of the experience out of it.

The only thing that saved me was the ideation and [? design ?] thinking session. I'd done rapid prototyping. And before that, I'd done brainstorming, connecting all these points, all these creative ideas that I have-- how to combine all those things together.

And challenging encounter. So considering that the main thing about this content is educating people-- so it should have enough resources and content that is reliable enough to educating people. So in digital work regarding digital colonization happening. And more importantly that also is that there is no voice or no resources from the third world countries such as Iran to bring all this information offline or digitally.

So lack of all this knowledge, it was a main challenge that I encountered. And our thing was, my team was limited. I collaborated with many artists, but it was mainly me, and it was independent project. So upon limitation in regarding the budget and timing and all these roles that I had to develop this game was another challenge that I faced.

So in production, the first thing I started with was 3D modeling. Because of all this photorealistic recreated cultural heritage site, it needed to be rich. It needed to be realistic. So I started with creating modules that made that environment rich, and that was the 3D model.

So first challenge, same as most parts, a rare historical reference. So the main thing to do to 3D modeling, you have to see how it looks in the real life, and you try to recreate it. And there was no images, specifically considering many of these contents are about culture site that are long gone, like thousands of years ago. It make it hard to find good enough references.

And then after I just gather enough information, I use cutting edge tools such as 3D Max. There was a great tool giving me an opportunity to do the 3D based, 3D model, and UV mapping. And then after I created all that base models, it was the time to do the texturing characterization because of my process of doing modular design.

And also, all these assets exist in the past. All the texture, they had their own characteristics. So I've done many studies, I've done many research to learn how I could just paint and make the texture for all these objects to represent their meaning, their characteristic, and balancing realism and creativity.

So as you see in these images, I try to be creative. Because of lack of information, it needed me to be creative. To create all these 3D assets and digital models. Because of all the challenges that I face, I try to make it balanced between something that's relatively historically accurate but also creatively model, and also having photorealistic graphics.

And just I use all my modeling techniques, too. As you've seen in the image from the base models to the painted models. And in the design environment, I tried to have this characteristic applied to all these artworks.

The next step was to do level design. It's the part that I love to do most. That started to recreating historical and cultural site. It's worth mentioning many game is happening in the Apadana Palace in Persepolis, which belongs to Achaemenid Empire. And it built and destroyed almost 2,000 years ago. And it make it challenging, because to be creating something ancient is-- especially about my country, that a lot of resources gone-- are destroyed throughout the history.

And right now, being away from my country, I have limited access to even visit those locations to get references. So I took this challenge to take whatever is out there and all my memories from this environment from traditional sites like modern environment, as you see in the left side, like a traditional homes in Iran, to old castle. I tried to recreate all this environment and just being architecturally and historically also accurate to bring that mean feeling and being in this environment and learn my culture. Because some aspect of my culture even presented in our architecture and environments.

And learning from our historic architecture, same as on our steps, I spend many time on resources that I gather. I studied them. I start to educate these resources to get the idea of how I could perform this level design and environmental storytelling. In designing high detail, the main goal was to educating people about all this historical information.

And it's all happening in what I call creatively recreated. So I needed the environment to be rich and detailed enough to present all these aspects. And another thing was to-- because it's a game, it's not the museum or virtual experience that you only see the environment, it need to be embedded with the gameplay and all the other modules that we have this in experience.

So I tried to create this balance between all these different elements-- to be historically accurate, to be creative, to be bound with the gameplay and having high details. All things that are glued up to have different environment. As you've seen, I've done top-down wire framing for the [INAUDIBLE] environment, for layers of details. And you've seen it's a Persian traditional kitchen, which is historical accurate. The right side is fantasy location, which is royal garden that I designed for my environment.

So after I've done two prior step, I came to the point that many people who are experiencing my project. They came to the idea, these environments are rich. They are high detail. And they think that if I have something in VR, it could elaborate people's experience and eventually improving my main goal, which is educating people. And I think about it, and I came with the cinematic immersive environment.

So what I believe is like for the VR experience, I don't want something interactable when I'm having this immersive experience happening in cinematic. So you could experience and learn more. So for the in-person session, we would have this VR. We will just bring the VR. Also, if you check my website, you could just see it online. So you could experience by yourself how this thing work.

One technique that I used was overlapping content and historical transition. So I take advantage of the environment that I already designed and design new kind of environment. And some of them are showing the progress of how this environment actually looks right now. And I believe this added to the value that if you experience this kind of product, you could have a glimpse of what it could feel like in real life.

Because of the current condition, probably none of us could just visited Iran. Visited all this historical location. Cultural heritage sites. So I tried to overlapping and showing this transition of what it looked like right now and what it was in the past. And you will just see this transition happening around you, probably giving you an idea what it was-- creatively looked like in the past.

And for adding that feeling to being immersed in this environment, I created living environment modules. So some elements in the environment, such as fire or flags or other elements are animated. So when you experience it in VR, you could just try to more and more-- more than one time. You will always see something is living and just giving you feel that you already existed there.

And the last thing was that I enhance engagement toward VR. So I take advantage of all tools such as narrative system. So I personally recorded and designed immersive narrative that happening to giving you an idea while you being in different environment toward VR. It actually explain you what this environment is and what this main goal is-- to present you all this details. So actually building a bridge between what you're seeing and what you need to learn and how this learning curve happen.

So one of the challenging part here was to do the rendering for the cinematic. I've done different framework. I've used many different frameworks and I tried multiple ways, but none of them could give me a photorealistic, cinematic VR experience. So I came with this approach to do VR panoramic 8K rendering frames that I could just render each frame. And then when I do some editing and techniques to bring it to 4K, it could be played on any of your device.

Because while we're creating VR, we wanted to make sure that we could give all people accessible version of the software so they could just play under and on any device that they have. And my main goal was to reaching as much as audience could. So I tried to use this method. It was hard. I could just say it needed high end hardware. It was challenging, but I did make it work at the end. To make the cinematic version, as you've seen in the right side, it was what it was in the past. And the left side, it was a version that is happening during the transition.

Gamification. So one aspect of this project was to not just see all this digital creative reconstructed environment. I wanted people to interact with it, and not just with the goal to be entertained. I wanted to learn toward this interaction. So this is a educational, entertaining experience. So I started programming interactive modules. I use Blueprint and C++ to create all this gameplay elements with Unreal Engine.

Then there was a time that, after I'd done with the core elements, I came with idea-- how could you just create something that actually, even with the gameplay, could educate people. We wanted something like, you do and like you learn. So I try. I came up with this idea that I could just create simulated traditional rituals. So in this celebration for the new year-- it's called Nowruz, or New Day, we've done many rituals, such as designing clothes or making music or making food. And its main core is to design a table, putting seven unique items, like a wish for new year.

But the challenging part was, many of these rituals are centuries old, and people are so strict. It's like they just do these rituals. There is no customization. There is no interactivity. It's just a repetition of the actions that you're doing. So it was very challenging to find a way to do all these things in the game, all these rituals in the game, and make it fun and also educate them. So I came with this challenging fantasy story that narrate toward all these interactions with players will-- or users will interact with all these modules throughout the gameplay sessions.

And just by doing all this action, they will just get more information when they interact with the object. Or when they solve the puzzle, they will learn more. Another part that helped me a lot was modeling all those artifacts that exist back in the time. And just when you interact with them, you will learn more. So I made sure my range of audiences are from youngster to even old people-- that they could just, even non-gamer or gamer-- so they could just go search and interact with objects. So environments are fully rich with the artifacts that could also educate people when you interact with them, their description and information come into the screen, educating people.

And the last part that was very fun for me to do this project was empowering user generated content. So I believe many cultures, such as my own-- Persian, and specifically regarding our celebration, we are so open to share with different people all around the world. And I believe there is no ways better than a celebration to connect people with different cultures. So in this game, I try to design all the elements in a way that is understandable for non-Iranian, even though Iranian could just learn some after playing this game.

So all this educational content exists. And at the end of game, you would be able to design your own celebration. So I understand people might-- from audiences all around the world, they have their own differences, but they are allowed to at the end after they have this core concept idea of what Nowruz is. What my culture means. What our ritual means. They could just design and customize the celebration on their end. And hopefully they could celebrate it on their end as well with their family. So that was the part that I tried to do as well, because I want to create somehow an unforgettable experience. And that was part that helped me to do it.

So none of the things I mentioned above was going to work without optimization because of all this high-poly models and advanced lighting. It has all these things that you've seen happening in the scene. I had to do some optimization to make it work. To make sure that in the VR in the game, we have a smooth gameplay and narrative experience happening.

So first thing was, do I use all my experience in lighting design and lighting techniques? Because we have too many indoor and outdoor [? decor-- ?] different techniques to manage the scene to make sure the lighting and depth of the scene is good. But also, we have everything in their photorealistic way. So giving player that vibe that they are in a location.

Another feature that I tried to use was level of details. And then, so each object that you've seen in this scene is managed to make sure CPU-wise and GPU-wise, it's optimized. So the rendering happening fast and loading happening fast enough for player so they could just see no technical issue and just make sure they are fully focused on the main content.

And performance tuning for VR-- again, for VR specifically, because of all these things happening around you, you need something smooth. And for VR specifically, I try all those techniques-- some part of it I mentioned above-- to do [? AP ?] rendering and just having a static video cinematic. So I've done many rendering and optimization techniques to make sure that experience are smooth as well.

And testing and iteration. A methodology that I used for this was to do this [INAUDIBLE] game on the early access format. So I keep active communication with my users and players. I held many playtest sessions after each demo was released. Because I was doing rapid prototyping, I shared with people. I let them play it. I was so open to hear from them. Get the feedback. Be better. Just an inch loop cycle. I had some-- it was a hybrid fusion out of agile methodology and having some scrum adding it to it.

So it was just like, I tried to manage everything. In each sprint, I tried to create more content and share with people. Make sure that I have feedback-specific leads. I encountered a large audiences and wanted them all to have same balanced experience. So I collected feedbacks and update the game layer by layer to get ready to the ship-ready product.

So, briefly review. During this process, I personally create over 50 digital asset. It's modular. Could be more than that. That's why I said over. And over 15 unique environment, outdoor and indoor, and over 20 gameplay modules, including puzzles and quests in the game.

So, the conclusion. Talking about this digital colonization and creative reconstruction again, this project use this methodology. It's what has saved me during the first steps of this project. So I use this idea of I could creative, but also innovative and historically accurate. Whatever is out there, I would just gather and try to generate this content. I see that need for this new voice and new content to be created all around the world, so I try to be creative in this step and act against this digital colonization.

Because one thing that's worth mentioning is that I believe that we overuse many ideas in the industry, specifically game and entertainment education. So we need new voices. We need some intact resources. And I believe a specifically regarding misrepresented, underrepresented countries, we have many intact resources. And also, we need to fight this colonization that happening already every day to raise social awareness and just be more historically accurate.

Another thing that I came with in this project was technology and history in harmony. So I believe now is a good time for our new generation of content that could [INAUDIBLE] history and present it in a creative way that is not just digitally recreated, but also immersive and engaging for our users and for new generation of audiences to learn in a better system. In a system that harness technology to educate people about the history and taking the education to the next step.

The next thing was the project impact. So what I mainly focused on was to present my culture. Make sure I-- and it was a one-person project. I could address many of these things happening on my end. I ignite a fire and an idea inside the audience's mind so they could just go search. Learn more. And just, it's enabling minds against this colonization that's happening, and also raising social awareness that hopefully could lead up to some good impacts in the society.

And in the final thought, I believe that this is not the first. Not the last. It's just a sample. An idea of a framework and a product created based on that so that we could lead up a new generation of content. I always saying that we cannot change the past, but hopefully with using technology, we could create a better future.

I want to bring a quote from the last [? GameFest ?] that I attend in [? RPI GameFest ?] 2024. A quote from Benjamin, who gave me this impact award. As he said, "a game, that's not just about entertaining, and it's also about educating and creating change in the world. A game that thinks about what kind of impact games actually can have beyond just gameplay!"

So a glimpse of the future. I have high hopes that this method could be expanded and used globally. So it is a good framework. I believe that it could be customized. Could be enhanced. As I said, the first sample project was timed, so I know already there is many countries that are looking for something-- a tool, a methodology to raise their voice to create a new content. So I hope that this method could be expanded globally and used by artists all around the world to create a new generation of media.

Empowering and designers and artists. So one part is that I hope that this happening. I was very lucky and grateful that I could use many software, cutting edge technologies, tools. For example, I use 3D Max that was free available for students here at US. But I know from my country, many talented artists or developers are-- because of the political and current situation, they are prohibited to use this kind of software which helped them a lot to create this kind of content. So I hope in future, we could just have some globally programs or grants that could give access to even more people.

And also it's worth mentioning I used Unreal, and it helped me a lot to achieve this product. Another thing is wider adaptation in education and entertainment. As I explained before, I'm born and raised in gamer, so I believe gaming and gamification is a very strong tool that could take education to next step. I know already many institutions, many educational centers all around the world start using games to educate people. So I believe it's just the beginning.

It could be way better. It could just expand it more. And I see this trends and official resources such as NSF start granting and giving chance to people to think about how they could harness technology such as gamification and VR/XR to help to take education to the next level. And I believe combining this technology with this framework that I explained could also facilitate content presenting underrepresented and misrepresented countries.

And the last one is toward a new generation of media products. I believe if any people telling stories from never represented, misrepresented, underrepresented country is going to be new voice. It's going to be new content and new product. And we eventually could lead up a new generation of media-- games, movies, educational platforms, and all shape of media. We could have new content, and it could be rise globally, because now we are empowered. We could access the tools that could give us this chance to start developing and being able and creating this new content.

So thank you so much that my audience is in person. And if you watch it online, I want to first thank audience for giving me-- sorry. I want to first thank the audiences here in person and online who are watch me. Really grateful for your time and just attending my session here at Autodesk 2024. My second, I want to thank Autodesk University for giving me a chance to speak about my idea and my product. It's a great opportunity. I'm really grateful for that.

And I want to thank my faculty, my university who supported me, the department who supported me a lot, and my family and friends who always got my back and helped me make this product finished at the end.

So here for the Q&A, I'm looking forward for all feedbacks, comments, and questions online in the comment section or in person. As you see also, there is my contact information, my website, and my LinkedIn and email. I would be more than happy to network with kind of more people here and learn a lot. I'll say in the right side, you will see the QR code that is accessible for people. If you go to scan it, you will just see all my links. And thank you again.