Remember Souvenir - 3D Scanning & VR Preservation of Denis Meyers' Monumental Artwork
A virtual reality archiving project carried out within Studio Crafteke for the monumental, ephemeral exhibition Remember Souvenir by street artist Denis Meyers. Deployed across over 25,000 m² inside the abandoned Solvay headquarters in Brussels prior to demolition, the system delivers an independent 1:1 scale VR exploration.
Context & Heritage Preservation
- A Total Ephemeral Artwork: Over several months, Denis Meyers took over the entire abandoned Solvay building, painting 25,000 m² of murals, typographies, and portraits destined for demolition.
- Comprehensive Digital Archiving: Planning and executing a massive 3D scanning campaign to permanently freeze the architecture and artworks before demolition.
- Autonomous VR Scenography: Designing an immersive standalone VR tour on Oculus Quest allowing users to wander freely through the building maze at true human scale.
Technical Architecture & 3D Pipeline
- Industrial Photogrammetry (RealityCapture): Mass-processing thousands of aerial and terrestrial photographs to reconstruct the complex geometry and textures of the entire site.
- Procedural Automation (Houdini): Developing custom cleanup scripts and procedural retopology pipelines to handle the massive 25,000 m² mesh automatically.
- Standalone VR Optimization (Unity): Drastically reducing polygon counts, managing draw calls, and baking textures to ensure a stable framerate on mobile VR processors.
Workflow Breakdown & VR Immersion
1. Scanning Campaign & RealityCapture
Challenge: Accurately capture the visual complexity of a 25,000 m² labyrinthine site covered in graffiti and heterogeneous surfaces (glass roofs, stairwells, weathered walls).
Solution: Intensive photo capture campaign and heavy photogrammetric processing in RealityCapture to generate a high-fidelity point cloud and 3D mesh.
2. Houdini Pipeline & Unity VR Integration
Challenge: Run a gigabyte-heavy photogrammetric 3D model smoothly on a standalone mobile VR headset (Oculus Quest).
Solution: Automated procedural cleanup via a custom Houdini pipeline, coupled with aggressive optimization in Unity (retopology, polygon decimation, lightmap baking, and substitute textures).
