DGTL LIB
Client: Vita Motus / Do Lab
Event: DGTL LIB [1-2]
Steaming Platform: Twitch
[All renderings by HNZLR]
ROLES
Unreal Engine Technical & Creative Lead
Lead Environment Designer & Scenographer
Virtual Production Lead
Archival Asset Integration and Optimization Specialist
Cinematic Director & Virtual Cinematographer [250+ minutes of performance]
Tokimonsta, Moby, Shiba San, Mikey Lion, Desert Dwellers, Megan Hamilton
Mainstage Concept Artist & Designer [“The Water Temple”]
RISING AGAIN TO THE CHALLENGE
HNZLR’s multidisciplinary fluency, deep-rooted connection to the Do Lab ethos, and pioneering command of Unreal Engine positioned him as the driving force behind the virtual production of DGTL LIB. Both Vita Motus and Do Lab identified HNZLR as uniquely qualified to navigate the technical and creative demands of this role. Viewing the project as a vocation, HNZLR overdelivered, working through exhaustion to give life to this universe. Feeling the loss of community and proximity afforded by the festival’s ritual reunion, our team aimed to bring joy and uplift the quarantined world.
DIGITAL FESTIVAL
DGTL Lightning in a Bottle, a “digital festival” and massive programming effort streamed on Twitch for 3 days, was an opportunity to reclaim some of that unity. HNZLR’s design transported viewers to an idyllic LIB environment, capturing its spirit while exploring new frontiers in virtual performance, a space quickly becoming the future of live entertainment.
TOKIMONSTA HEADLINE SET
THE MAIN STAGE [WATER TEMPLE]
HNZLR concepted and designed a surreal festival mainstage, “The Water Temple”, using parametric modeling in Grasshopper, then brought it to life within Unreal Engine, integrating animated water features, floating clouds, dynamic lighting, layered materiality, reactive FX, and dancing avatars, establishing a dreamlike centerpiece for the headlining performances.
VIRTUAL CINEMATOGRAPHY
As Virtual Production Lead, HNZLR rendered over 250 minutes of continuous audiovisual performances, synchronizing music, lighting, and camera movement. His virtual cinematography featured beat-matched editing, simulated gimbals, drones, and reactive depth of field- resulting in performances that felt dynamic, embodied, and alive. HNZLR additionally provided generous B-roll showcasing the exterior landscape to keep viewers immersed in the 3D world during changeovers between programming.
Virtual headliner sets: Tokimonsta, Moby, Shiba San, Mikey Lion, Desert Dwellers, Megan Hamilton
main stage design: the water temple
[Virtual Stage Design by HNZLR]
CENTERPIECE OF A DIGITAL UNIVERSE
HNZLR’s Water Temple was conceived as the heart of DGTL LIB’s virtual landscape, an impossible structure suspended between dream and reality. Informed by years of physical stage design for Lightning in a Bottle and beyond, the Temple embraces the anti-gravity affordances of virtual space while retaining a tactile sensibility rooted in real-world buildability.
SURREAL YET GROUNDED
HNZLR pursued a surreal weightlessness, yet one grounded in the recognizable aesthetics of the Do Lab and Vita Motus vernacular: forms reminiscent of trees, mushrooms, and hyperbolic geometries. The Temple’s core structure- a mirrored octagonal form composed of sloping, interlaced wood members- rises from the water as a floating diamond, top-heavy yet serene. Its mass was shaped parametrically in Grasshopper using a virtual “lumber stacking” methodology: a layered system echoing the language of joinery and modular build logic, hinting at its potential real-world constructability. In the virtual realm, however, we stripped away rigging and guy lines, allowing the forms to levitate untethered above the lake’s surface.
SACRED FRONTAGE
The DJ booth is exalted at the temple’s open frontage, marked by a cascading central waterfall that lightly veils the artist and LED wall in a luminous scrim. Additional waterfalls descend from the temple’s wings, adding to the floating sanctity of the scene. LED IMAG screens hover above like celestial portals, framed in wisps of animated clouds. Throughout the day-to-night cycle of each 40+ minute set, pendant lanterns and floor lights flicker with audio-reactive textures—breathing with the music and deepening the sense of immersion.
Water Temple was not only a feat of imaginative architecture- it was an offering. A dreamlike refuge conjured from code and memory, grounded in the sacred energy of shared experience.
DGTL LIB LANDSCAPE
THE VIRTUAL WORLDBUILDER
HNZLR led the creation of a richly detailed open-world festival environment: he sculpted and painted terrain, instanced layers of lush meadow foliage, created paths, carefully placed Do Lab’s iconic structures, designed sightlines, curated ambient life. He authored visual moments throughout, such as parked Kubotas, picnics, yoga gatherings, beach scenes, lake floaties, butterflies, art easels, belle tents, and more. These broad gestures and granular details evoke the living heartbeat of the festival.
In addition to headline performances, HNZLR also rendered stationary shots for live-stream composting, featuring secondary stages such as The Hive , Quinoa [Learning Kitchen], Compass [Beacon], and a vignetted outdoor space for additional programming such as cooking demos and conceptual seminars.
OPTIMIZATION
SHADER COMPLEXITY
This view shows the final real-time environment after a performance optimization pass, targeting GPU efficiency for immersive playback, given the CPU-bound demands of virtual production.
HNZLR authored structural geometry with clean topology and optimized materials, resulting in near-zero overhead (consistent green).
Foliage assets were evaluated for overdraw and shader cost, with masked materials tuned for clarity vs cost.
Translucent effects (e.g. waterfalls) were deliberately preserved with minimal surface coverage to maintain visual impact while isolating complexity.
This diagnostic view was part of HNZLR’s broader workflow to ensure high frame rate stability under live camera tracking conditions, LED wall playback, and audio-visual lighting sync, and green-screen.
render gallery
[All renderings by HNZLR]
