A recent work in progress : recreating the 3d model of Shigeru Ban Paper House in detail, built in 1995 near lake Yamanaka, Japan.
Reading jpgs, tracing in Autocad, modeling in Sketchup, rendering in Enscape, and a little dive into Unreal Engine too for nicer shots.
See also : 10 lessons from the Paper House model
South East View in Enscape 
From down below, the house stands on a sloped hill 
Night render in unreal engine 5 
Playing with light and fog to create godrays 
Material assignment and landscape building in Unreal Engine 
Renders in Unreal Engine, using precision cameras and depth of field 
Render in Unreal Engine with the addition of one Metahuman
The impulse of the Paper House project
I had always heard about Shigeru Ban’s work associated with the use of ‘ecological’ materials like cardboard in his architectural projects.
As with Tadao Ando, I recently flipped through his works and found one particular house that caught my attention : the Paper House from 1995, simple, elegant, squared and limited to one level.
This house was one of the first to use cardboard tubes as a structural element in Japan, and was a huge factor that made paper become part of the building regulation. Hopefully , the house still stands today.
Getting started on the 3D model
As always, a little planning, reading of the few clues I could find about the building : 1 floor plan, 1 section, like 4 or 5 usables pictures, so not much in this case.
I modeled the Paper House in sketchup, and rendered it in real time with Enscape. All 3D files are available here in my CG trader library.
If you want to take a crack at it, I’m giving away the 2D Autocad base files to download here.
My final results
The renders that best showcase the 3D model of Shigeru Ban Paper house are presented below. Enscape visual settings customized for each one with different lighting settings help make different looking results easily :
A great way to exercise on Sketchup for speed modeling, also with Enscape for populating the model with trees and people, before rendering it nicely. Lots of architecture facts learned along the way about how to build with paper.
Plus, a few improvements made on the workflow. Overall, a quite satisfying project.
Making of the 3D model of Shigeru Ban Paper House : the step by step
Quickly, a overview of my usual modeling method, which is still :
- Setting the objective
- Making a reference image library : using Pureref this time
- Drawing the 2D base in Autocad
- Sketchup file set up: units, base image, scale
- Modeling using components and layers
- Making efficient scenes in Sketchup and in Enscape
- Final touches in Sketchup
- Final renders on Enscape
- Export Datasmith into Unreal Engine
- Material assignment and landscape building in Unreal Engine
- Renders from Unreal Engine 5.1
I’ll synthetize the steps in a quick gallery of captures of the on going work. For more details about methodology you can check out my previous post about Tadao Ando’s house in Utsubo Park that I modeled using the same process.
1. Setting the objective : recreate the spaces as real as possible 
2. Making the reference image board in PureRef 3. Drawing the 2D base in Autocad 
4. Importing Autocad 2D file into Sketchup 
5. Modeling using components and layers 
6. Making efficient scenes using section cuts 
7. Final touch in Sketchup 
8. Final renders in Enscape 
9. Exporting the sketchup file into Unreal Engine via Datasmith plugin 10. Material assignment and landscape building in Unreal Engine 11. Renders in Unreal Engine, using precision cameras and depth of field 11. Playing with light and fog to create godrays
Conclusion
Getting to visit the Paper House
Recreating Shigeru Ban’s Paper House was rather fast (around 15 hours of work on different programs) and a very rich project to learn about.
As with Ando’s house, it was quite fun to be able to visit the model once it was finished, especially in Enscape with its real time rendering abilities. It is still easier than flying around the world to Japan to try and find it.
The architectural lessons learned from the 3D model will be part of the Instructive Modeling posts later.
Workflow
Improvements on the speed of the 3d modeling in Sketchup, still using Pureref reference board and all the usual sketchup modeling worklow tips.
Good quality (let’s say acceptable) of Enscape renders and animations.
First try in Unreal Engine 5
A step further is possible once you import the model in something like Unreal Engine 5, it’s quite impressive what effects you can achieve with it, only it takes quite some time to get used to it.
Metahuman for Archviz
Going even a little further, I wanted to populate my model with one person, a 3D person. This feature is actually possible in Unreal Engine by adding a Metahuman character inside the model.
You can then make him (or her) do whatever you want, position him however you like inside an animation. In my case, I remain quite simple, making my guy (his name is Aoi) enjoy the sunlight, sitting in one of the Paper House’s chairs.
The animation process needs quite a lot of work but it shows great potential, for customized scene with population that do not seem too robot-like.
This is definitely worth digging deeper in the future.
Anyhow, if you made it this far, thank you for reading, and see you on the next one.