Shibaozhai (1999)

I created this in January 1999 using Bryce3D and it was my first attempt at rendering a location in the real world. 99% of the time I prefer to create places that don't exist but inspiration struck...

I was watching a special on TV called "Lost Treasures of the Yangtze" when I saw this temple. The name means "stone treasure stronghold" in Chinese and it was built directly into a stone rockface overlooking the river.

At the time the government was planning a massive dam that and it was speculated that the temple would be lost when the Three Gorges region flooded.

I thought that would be a real shame and decided it would be a fun project to preserve it with my own version. The temple is built entirely of Bryce primatives (cubes, spheres, tori, terrains, etc).

There were very few photos online at this time (digital cameras were still around 1MP) so I only had the TV doc for reference material. Fortunately the Chinese gov managed to move it (!) so you can still find photos today.