Posted 10.08.2010 at 12:16 pm
12 Comments
Making Future Magic
Dentsu/Berg
Dentsu London and Berg teamed up to create this stop-motion film, entitled "Making Future Magic." It's driven by a 3D light-painting technique, one I've never seen before: It's extruded from an iPad, like Play-Doh through a press.
Berg London is one of our favorite design teams--no wonder, since they made the Mag+ platform on which our iPad app, Popular Science+, is built. You can read more about that here.
The animators came up with a brand-new method of light painting, one that's simple but leads to unearthly and very cool results. The animators create 3D models of whatever they want to show in the film--in this case, often typography, but also various objects and little anthropomorphic characters--and chop them up into cross-sections. It's like a CAT scan, more than anything else--a whole bunch of individual slices of a 3D whole.
Those slices are compiled into animated movies, and played back on an iPad. But here's where it gets interesting: The team then drags the movie-playing iPad backwards while capturing the path with long-exposure photographs, about 3-6 seconds apiece. The photographs (of which about 5,500 were taken) capture the path of the iPad's light.
But due to human movement, the iPad isn't perfectly moved, like on a dolly--there's jiggling and hesitation and deviations. So not only is the original 3D rendering turned into a light painting, but one with motion and flaws. It's a pretty peculiar but also mesmerizing way to animate, and it's always fun to see new ways to use the iPad (in addition to the usual ones, like religious services and dolphin communication).
The best of the still photographs from the film are available in a print-on-demand book, which costs about $60 (or $44 for the softcover).
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Firsties!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Combine this technology with a moving conveyor belt, a paper thin oled screen that moves faster than the eye can see, and a good processor to sync its frame rate to the speed it's moving and you have a 3D projection screen.
This is all in theory of course, but someone who actually knows what they're doing could get this to work.
BO: Because light painting is an interesting art form, because this is a new technology-enabled method thereof, and because PopSci gets to plug their app that way. = ) (Something I really don't understand - my Eee has a lower total screen res than iPad, and I have no problem reading the site, even in portrait. = )
Andrew: I don't think you understand what's going on here. For this to work in realtime, you'd have to have a screen that would physically move that entire distance and back in 1/30th of a second or so. Somehow, I don't think even Mac's hardware can stand up to that.
ya you should probably change it to ignorant bastard
Yeah, but if you want to see a real drawing system on a tablet, Checkout my Artonics app for iPad it's wild and wicked
Looks pretty cool to me, it might not be awesome and exciting to some but who cares?
On an off note - who else thinks it's funny that these comment boards seem to always have a couple of people that just end up insulting each other? I mean it's not that hard although mildly entertaining. Can we get back to something related to the subjects instead of ego bashing? Maybe? Probably not...
BO why are you hating on the ipad? I think this was a cool article and cool way to utilize an existing piece of technology. If other pads where on the market 6 months ago maybe they would have used them. maybe in 6 months they will adopt a different pad to use, but for now they are using the ipad as a means to end. Stop being a hater. Jawhawker is right.
BO: You are being fairly critical for someone that can't spell the word "capital" and misuses a comma in the same post in which you are criticizing someone for not using them at all.
capital, not capitol
Nice one! @ BO
@BO As much as I hate people that just use the comment section to get into useless arguments about nothing intelligent or nothing regarding the article. Which is partly why I called you out on your mistakes. Mind your own business?!?! How old are you? Last time I checked, you left a comment on an internet article for everyone on the planet to read. Forgive me if I felt the need to call you out, why don't you just take it like the Big Oil man that you are, instead of whining like a little baby.
Those slices are compiled into animated movies, and played back on an iPad. But here's where it gets interesting: The team then drags the movie-playing iPad backwards while capturing the path with long-exposure photographs, about 3-6 seconds apiece. That's seriously amazing.. I'm glad they showed the making of!
- Glenn Douglas
http://www.governmentgrantstruth.org/