A Brooklyn-based animator has taken Vincent Van Gogh’s classic masterpiece The Night Café and recreated the work as an explorable three-dimensional piece via a virtual reality headset.

Animator Mackenzie Cauley used certain features in Van Gogh’s piece to maintain the art style as seen in the original piece, but he has added a third dimension, opening up the possibility for use on other famous art works.

The 3D world was created over the course of 400 hours by taking specific elements of The Night Café and digitising them using 3D software. Some parts of the room which aren’t seen in the picture have also been added. The design also softens the distorted perspective of the piece so as to prevent users from feeling nauseous and it also includes visual and sound effects.



"The initial idea came from a film project I had started that centred around a fictional painter that was heavily inspired by Van Gogh's life," said Cauley speaking to AM2. "Over the course of the film I wanted to begin to transform the world around the character to a painted world. At the same time I was beginning to explore VR and I quickly realised how incredible it would be to see Van Gogh's paintings from this intimate first person perspective.

"I began work on taking some of my favourite paintings of Van Gogh's and drawing them in rough sketches. From these sketches I modelled all of the objects using Autodesk Maya and then digitally hand-painted each one in Mudbox. As much as possible I used his paintings as reference, trying to incorporate details such as brush strokes and the variety of colors he used with each stroke.

“While creating the environments of these paintings in 3D, I've had to expand on areas that can't be seen – rooms behind doors, objects hidden from view and people turned away from the viewer. It's been an interesting process in using reference material from Van Gogh and other expressionist painters, but also imagining what might have been there, just off the edges of the canvas.

"It was important to me that the space didn't feel static; so with the addition of people, Van Gogh being one of them, as well as the billowing smoke from his pipe and blooming lights, it would give a sense of the environment being alive."

After unveiling his Van Gogh work, Cauley revealed exclusively to AM2 that he has further plans in the works for other VR paintings and expressed his eagerness to work with galleries and institutions in the future.

"I could definitely imagine other paintings coming to life in three dimensions like this," added Cauley. "There is also the possibility of making more traditional gallery experiences that allow viewers to virtually walk through any museum in the world, or even fictional museum's with entirely impossible art collections.

"I'm really excited with VR as a medium and the response to this project has been great so I am definitely encouraged by that."