'Music' by Toby Skinner

Projections

The Projections project leverages the Blender Cycles renderer to output high resolution 3D prints.

Each print starts life as an image, the image is turned into a feature set (via SURF and manual selection) and this is exported as .OBJ and .MAT files (with the colours being pulled from the original image under the Voronoi region centroid).

Whilst exporting, the Z coordinate of each polygon point is scaled using a mapping from the RGB colour space, this forms the start of the depth map.

The files are then imported into Blender and the poly are translated or extruded along the Z axis manually until a suitable final structure is found. Various different light sources are positioned in and around the structure and finally it is rendered. Shadows are kept in most cases to give the structure an architectural feel and are removed in other cases when it causes to much of a noisy image.

Each A0 render takes about 12 hours using dual GTX 970s.

Series

Detail (1:1)

Dimensions

10000 x 16000 (~A0 Landscape and Portrait)

FAQ

Can this exact image be re-produced? Yes, the workflow is completely deterministic.

Are there any other images on this website that were generated by this algorithm? Parts of the algorithm (Voronoi graph, feature extraction) are used across the site. No other project leverages height maps or Blender Cycles at this time.

Is this a limited edition print? Yes

How can I buy a print? Please get in touch with your requirements.