Forest Exhibition

Twelve minutes in a forest that does not exist — seven scenes wrapped across the walls and floor of one room.

Twelve continuous minutes of forest for the same five-surface room the solar system runs in, built for Infinia in 2024. Seven environments, each modelled and lit as a place rather than as a backdrop.

There is no story and nobody to follow. It is built to be sat inside while it changes around you — closer to weather than to film — so the transitions are long dissolves rather than cuts, and the brightest event in twelve minutes is light coming through the canopy.

By: Özgür Kahraman — 3D & Immersive Artist
Client: Infinia
Year: 2024
Role: 3D Artist · Immersive Content
Tools: Unreal Engine 5
Blender
After Effects
HeavyM

In the room

Dressed as a clearing

The room is dressed as a clearing. Trunks and canopy run up the walls, the forest floor runs under the seats, and the light moves the way it does outdoors — slowly, and from somewhere you cannot quite see. Visitors themselves pick up the projection: leaves fall across shoulders, and light pools around whoever is standing.

The pace is the point. Nothing cuts. Each scene dissolves into the next over a long enough transition that the room seems to be changing season rather than changing slide.

An audience in the final sequence: the forest turned magenta and violet, light streaks tracing between the trees

A visitor walking toward a mist-filled forest projected on the far wall, rocks and a stream at their feet

A visitor with the forest's leaves projected across their back, standing in the misty scene

A visitor standing on the projected floor as a burst of green light spreads around them

A visitor silhouetted against the night forest, the trees lit magenta and purple

The Infinia edit

Projection mapping

Seven scenes, one wall

Each state of the forest is a separate environment, built in Unreal Engine 5 and rendered through Movie Render Queue as a wall panorama at the installed ratio, with its own floor pass. Shown here in the order the room plays them: from the dark entrance, through mist and water, to the clearing.

Wall panorama: a dark forest floor, an earthen path lit only from ahead — The entrance — dense foliage, the path lit only from ahead

Wall panorama: a night lake with a single break in the canopy reflected on the water — A night lake, one break in the canopy on the water

Wall panorama: mist over a shallow river between grey-blue trees — Mist on the river — the forest at its greyest and most open

Wall panorama: dark trees closing in, daylight at the far end of the passage — The passage — trees closing in, light at the far end

Wall panorama: a lake at golden hour, sunlit trees on the far bank reflected in the water — The golden lake

Wall panorama: near darkness with two bright openings through the trees — Two openings in the dark

Wall panorama: a daylit clearing of moss, wet stone and a rock face — The clearing — full daylight, moss and wet stone

Setup

The same room, a different world

The forest runs on the same rig as the Space Exhibition: twelve projectors driven by a single workstation with three GPUs, with HeavyM warping and blending the outputs. What it plays is an H.264 master at the installed ratio with its floor pass — one clock for every surface, which is what keeps the floor and the walls in step through a twelve-minute continuous piece.

Projectors: 12
GPUs: 3
Workstation: 1
Minutes: 12

Wireframe diagram of the room: twelve ceiling-mounted projectors covering the walls and floor, fed by one workstation with three graphics cards

Three visitors seated before a forest of moss-covered rock and lit tree trunks, projected across the room