Shifting the Boundary of Physical and Virtual Worlds in 3D Art: Introducing Designer & Director, LIU Xin(1)

Speaking of creation in 3D art, there are always tutorials about Step 1, 2, 3… and a set of rules telling you what is right and what is wrong. However, LIU Xin, Designer and Director, always thinks out of the box, experimenting with creative approaches, no matter the physical or the digital ones. The distinctiveness and uniqueness in his artworks help him win praise and awards in the industry. Phytial Shopping Cart is one of them, and got the 2020 CGarchitect Awards in the Student (Film) category sponsored by Fox Renderfarm, your TPN-Accredited cloud rendering services provider.

• LIU Xin
• Designer/Director

LIU Xin is a Designer and Director who works between architecture and time-based media. His practice centers around the influence of digital and physical on shifting the boundaries of the design of spaces and objects.

He is currently freelancing. And in the beginning of March, 2021, he received admission to Harvard Graduate School of Design’s Master in Design Studies degree program. His collaborators include Burberry, Wallpaper*, NYLON, and Microsoft. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) where he also worked as the teaching assistant for graduate and undergraduate courses, as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture with Honors from the University of Liverpool where his graduation project was awarded the Sheppard Robson Jicwood Prize. Previously, he has worked at Testa & Weiser in the U.S., Sheppard Robson in the U.K., and Tianhua in China.

Burberry x Victor Ma x Microsoft AI - Runway 2.0 (Music Video)

He is traveling around the world examining the notion of both natural and built environments, individual experiences, and emerging techniques.

Phygital Shopping Cart

© LIU Xin & Yuting Zhu

Won the 2021 CGarchitect Awards

Caption:

Phygital = Physical × Digital

Phygital Shopping Cart is the second episode of the Phygital Supermarket Trilogy.

Shopping Cart Miniature Scenarios

The main character of the story is a shopping cart (or a trolley). In a shopping cart in a supermarket, we designed six miniature model scenarios, which can be organically combined in a shopping cart. Each miniature scene contains a miniature version shopping cart to tell a short story, and each scene embodies a technology or design method which we explored with Cinema 4D and Redshift Renderer. We selected the most familiar, unremarkable, and most overlooked object in life (that is, common daily necessities in supermarkets), and explored these familiar objects through a unique workflow we developed with Cinema 4D and Redshift rendering technology. Things were explored on the playful side, either enlarge the size or manipulate it with Effectors in order to take a look at what magical effects will burst out. Therefore, in each mini-model scene, in addition to the narrative of the story, a technique is also expressed. As we used the title sequence design as a format of the film, so we can use the text on the screen to introduce the story and design techniques of each scene.

Phygital Shopping Cart is the second episode of the Phygital Supermarket Trilogy, the other 2 episodes are Three Supermarkets and Phygital Supermarket Worlds. Phygital Supermarket Trilogy explores multiple techniques and mediums, discovering the possibility of shopping space forms in urban life.

Three Supermarkets

© LIU Xin, Yuting Zhu, Jui-Cheng Hung, Fateme Jalali

Phygital Supermarket Worlds

© LIU Xin, Yuting Zhu

LIU established his connection with CGarchitect Awards in 2019 for his nomination in the Student (Film) category. In the nominated artwork Augmented Library Aggregation, he selected objects like flowers and showerheads, and volume bashed them to depict a futuristic library space in the video.

Augmented Library Aggregation

Augmented Library Aggregation

© Xin Liu, Nero He

volume bashing

After experiencing all these fusions of physical and virtual space, you may wonder how LIU made his artworks, what’s more pivotal, how he has formed his design methodology and design language. In our interview with LIU, he reveals his workflow, techniques and design mindset, and explains his playful experiments in the creation process. Last but not least, his suggestion to CG enthusiasts that -- we should not only upgrade our technical skills with 3D software, and also improve our sense of art and aesthetic value -- resonates with what Fox Renderfarm has always insisted on -- Art Challenges Technology, whereas Technology Inspires Art.

For detailed interview:

Shifting the Boundary of Physical and Virtual Worlds in 3D Art: Introducing Designer & Director, LIU Xin(2)