Breathing Garden
3D Modeling & Animation

Breathing Garden is about environment building, meditative space, and the connection between humans and nature. The project came from my desire to create an immersive virtual space that felt both natural and fantastical. It is meant to be a place for people to pause, relax, be present in the moment and free of distractions. All the plants “breathe” in harmonized cyclical motion, and the viewer is meant to harmonize their own breath with the environment. The original audio, by Haniel (Spotify @Haniel), is composed of a passive dreamlike melody overlaid on a subtle pink noise track, a combination designed to relax the viewer.

The project takes the form of still images, fixed location 360 videos, and a standard video flying through the virtual environment. I included these various viewing options to allow people to choose their preferred method to experience the work. There is also a video documentation of a projection installation of the project, which pushes the theme of environment building even further. It is intended to show the work's true immersive potential and to blur the line between the digital and the physical, between technology and nature. Technology is often seen as a barrier between humans and nature, but in Breathing Garden I envision a reality where technology and nature coexist and enhance one another.


All the plants were modeled, textured, and animated in Maya. The models and animations are entirely my original work, and textures are sourced online and altered by me in Photoshop.


Leaf texture map green

Tree 1 texture map yellow

Tree 2 normal map

Petal 1 texture map

Leaf texture map pink


Tree 1 texture map purple

Tree 2 texture map pink

Petal 2 texture map

I modeled and painted the terrain in Unity, and made the water material using the Unity shader graph. After that I brought in all of the Maya models to populate the terrain.




