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Category: Art+Design

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

Render using a virtual lens onto film – in Blender

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Sirrandalot is not the first person to use a film-grain/film-like shader effect to give a certain feel. He is, however, the first to use Blender’s Cycles path-tracing engine to create a highly detailed physical modeling of a 3D camera body, simulate the various properties of a glass lens (then multiple lens system), the properties of chemical film, and then render scenes through this highly complex setup to generate real film-like images. Check out the final not-photos here or on Imgur.

You can download the camera and play with it yourself.

3d printed mathematical models

3d printed mathematical models

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Henry Segerman is a mathematician who likes to help visualize mathematical principles using 3D printing. He has a book that pairs the ideas and topics with 3D objects you can print out.

His YouTube channel covers an amazing number of topics. Different kinds of irregular dice (slant, skew, dLX, wild d6’s, and others) that are fair but look very different than the standard regular polyhedral style dice. He makes interesting puzzles, visualizing 3D printed objects of higher dimensions, impossible geometry, interesting gearing, topology, and many other cool topics.

What’s great about his channel is that he’s a mathematician so you get a healthy dose of the theory that makes the objects possible.

Building a video wall

Building a video wall

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Live Production Mastery shows how they make a 90 foot long, 17 foot tall (56 panels wide, 10 panels tall) 120fps video wall. It is run by 4 Unreal engine computers and they include all kinds of interesting details about power, networking, mounting, etc. Everything you would need to build your own.

AI powered NPCs fill a city

AI powered NPCs fill a city

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Combining live voice recognition, voice synthesis, and an AI large language model, Replica Studios’ Smart NPCs for Unreal allows you to carry out real-time, non-scripted conversations with anyone on your virtual streets. You can even download the demo here and try it yourself (warning: it’s 25 gb!).

These fully simulated AI characters will respond to your live-spoken language in the demo. You can ask where they’re from, whether they believe in aliens, complement their clothes, what car they drive, get food recommendations, tell people you don’t like their haircut, ask for directions to the park (and they’ll give it to you and tell you to feed the pigeons), talk about their insurance plans, what crimes they have committed, start some rumors and conspiracy theories, and anything you can think of. It’s got a few quirky bits, but it’s pretty surreal.

If you think that’s crazy, also check out their AI powered voice actors. The amount of dynamic quality in their voices is pretty amazing. It is almost good enough to replace main character voice actors, but it sure could be used to fill out dozens and dozens of minor roles.

The original channel comes from Jeff Favignano:

The technological development of – Pencil Sharpeners

The technological development of – Pencil Sharpeners

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Who knew something as simple as pencil sharpeners had such a long history. The Awesomer put together this little collection of old-school pencil sharpeners from the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.

Or if you want, go for one of these over-engineered modern ones:

I can assure you that the Palomino Kum Point Pencil Sharpener is pretty awesome (newer model here, and the one with the tip sharpener here). I use it all the time.

You can also check out this video by the ridiculously good Stuff Made Here in which he creates some of the most ridiculous pencil sharpeners he can.

Woman in Black London stage play ends, then doesn’t

Woman in Black London stage play ends, then doesn’t

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https://vimeo.com/864191686

I was crushed to hear the famous London play ‘Woman in Black‘ was closing on March 4, 2023. The award winning and record setting Stephen Mallatratt adaptation of Susan Hill’s novel had been running continuously at London’s Fortune Theater since 1989. I have always wanted to see it, despite having made 2 trips to London and not having time to catch a play.

I saw the adaptation at Chicago’s Royal George Theater right before the pandemic and it was fantastic (The theater closed in 2020).

What I’m excited about is that the play is now on tour throughout the UK for 2023/2024. Not only that, but it appears to also be making its way across the US in 2023/2024.

Unbeknownst to me, it was in New York’s McKittrick Hotel and San Francisco in late 2021-early 2022.

Upcoming, it looks like it will be in New Jersey – Princeton’s McCarter Theatre Center October 13 to October 29th, 2023. It will be in the Herberger Theater Center‘s in Phoenix from Feb 8 to 25th, 2024. Hopefully they have some additional showings as well!

Acting for film and stage are different beasts

Acting for film and stage are different beasts

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“The theatre is an operation with the scalpel, I think movie acting is an operation with the laser.” In this documentary, Michael Caine teaches the art of movie acting to five young actors, who perform scenes from “Alfie”, “Deathtrap” and “Educating Rita”. He shares all kinds of learnings, tricks, and ways to think about different kinds of close-ups, props, and a variety of other cool things viewers likely take for granted.

While this is likely dated now as framing decisions, camera technology, pacing and storytelling have changed a lot, I think it’s really cool to see what the actors are thinking when portraying a role and all the different kinds of methods and understanding they have.

drawing the effect of detail

drawing the effect of detail

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Stephen Travers Art has a wonderful collection of drawing tutorials.

When drawing highly detailed things (fields of flowers, trees, and complex cityscapes) there is a tremendous amount of detail. As it turns out, far, FAR too much detail to actually draw. So how do you draw highly complex detail – without drawing the detail? You draw the effect of detail.

  1. Draw some of the key, close items clearly. You need to have some clearly recognizable individual elements of the subject. Draw them of sufficient size and shape to be easily recognizable without any confusion around them – by not crowding them too close together and enhancing their edges with silhouettes.
  2. Enhance the silhouettes of the key flowers with shadow/darkness. Fill the elements around some of the key items with shadow to highlight the shape of the individual blooms/elements.
  3. As you move back to the background – you keep establishing the key elements (blooms, petals, buds, stalks)
  4. Use the direction of scribbles of the darkness to point the eye towards the key elements (blooms/petals/buds).
  5. Dark tones come forward, lighter elements are pushed towards the back. So use more shadow in closer elements and lighter elements in the background. To get lighter strokes, use less pressure or use a thinner pencil.
  6. Don’t fill all the gaps – move around randomly and leave gaps. You must leave gaps and randomness . Stop every moment or two and see how the wandering of the shadow is going. Is there too much of a grey tangle of lines (too many) – add more dark shadow. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll fill everything in evenly and the giveaway is that it will all be the same overall tone of grey. You want some areas very dark, some light, and some grey.

Architectural drawings

  1. Architecture often has repeated patterns. Capturing the repeating-ness is more important the actual pattern that is repeating.
  2. Closer repeated patterns should be drawn with more detail than the same repeated pattern far away. Follow the same basic design of the close repeated pattern but make it simpler in the far away repeated pattern – your eye will naturally bring the nearer detail to those elements in the background.
  3. If there is a repeated element, draw them all with the same stroke strength and style. This means it’s usually best to do all the repeated elements one after the other to make sure the technique is consistent (pressure, line width, size, etc). This helps you keep them all as symmetrical as possible.
  4. For repeated elements that move away from your camera, draw the closest one with much more detail first, then less and less as you repeat the elements further and further away from the camera. Again, drawing the more detailed ones first helps you ‘summarize’ or make a smaller repeated one match easier.
  5. Another key element to know that capturing the symmetry of the scene is more important than the details of the elements/decorations. Like before, capturing the flow and pattern of the architectural lines is more important than the actual path it takes.
  6. You can also use tone to emphasize form much faster than just using lines

Give his techniques a watch:

Viewfinder puzzle game

Viewfinder puzzle game

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Viewfinder is a new 3D puzzle game on PC and game consoles. It involves taking a picture with a film camera, then using the 2D picture to overlay the 3D world. The 2D picture then replaces/augments the 3D world with the 3D that was in the picture. It’s hard to describe, but very interested technique.

There’s also folks like Willlogs who are making their own versions in Unreal and describing how they think the mechanics work.