Zen Garden
Project Walkthrough
In this project, I explore the fusion of traditional landscape architecture and modern digital design by creating a 3D Zen garden environment within Unity. The goal is to reimagine the principles of Japanese Zen garden design— naturalness, asymmetry, and stillness and blend them with some Chinese garden design concepts, such as “Yin & Yang,” through a digital medium that enables immersive spatial experiences. The project creates a walkable and explorable digital Zen garden aiming for entertainment, cultural preservation, and education.
1 - Terrain setup
- The terrain is made of 4 different-sized raked sands (traditional Zen principle), and was layered to form the basic terrain.
- Use of stones to outline the main path across the garden.
- For the real-time visual effects of water, I used a URP Shader Graph to set up and adjust the level of waves and foams.
2 - Architecture
- The buildings are inspired by Japanese shrines, with some modernist designs (such as the water wells in the scene).
- The paths are decorated with fences and wooden textures.
- Used unique Japanese elements such as the shishi odoshi fountain.
- Used a warm directional Light to simulate sunlight, and two spot lights in the stone lanterns.
- Real-time shadows and reflections.
- Use of a soft HDRI sky box.
3 - Lighting
4 - Camera movement
- Two ways of approach: orbital and first-person.
- The orbital view used a customized script to program the auto-rotation movement of the camera.
- The first-person view used a free camera script from Unity to let the player move freely in the scene.
5 - Post-processing
-Enabled depth of field, ambient occlusion, bloom, anti-aliasing, and color grading.