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Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

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Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#231

Post by ecjhdnc2025 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #196
esjeon wrote: post #82

I've been spending a lot of time on photography (though mostly w/ film cameras) during recent years, and only recently realized this is actually photographed. (It took long because I'm a long-time Linux user, so I barely seen the image.) Many people say this would've been easier with VFX, but I disagree. The image has highly convincing details that would take a long time even for highly talented VFX artists to nail.…

I think if you handed this image to a VFX artist and said “make this,” they could do it. They probably could have done it back in 2015, too. But the team making this image didn’t have it in advance. They just had some ideas they wanted to try out. The story of how it was made is not just the story of the techniques they used, but also how they applied and adjusted those techniques to try things and see how it looked.…

I agree with all of this -- particularly the exploration and discovery aspects.

But a side note on this:

> You can’t cost-effectively improv your way through an animated movie the way a director and actors can with a camera and a set.

The Jim Henson Company is working on exactly the technology that supports this, actually -- the business of live puppetry capture as distinct from, say, motion capture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzbBdRHqGcQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDIlylZwLJE

This kit is expensive/bespoke but I don't know that it's _that_ expensive, set against how much money goes into making movies with large-scale bluescreen work these days. And it's wholly amenable to improv.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#232

Post by sneak »

LoganDark wrote: post #159
sneak wrote: post #126

The guy who did this also did some of the incredible work on Tron 2. I’m a big fan.

Tron: Ares, the upcoming sequel to Tron: Legacy? Or a different Tron 2?

No, I meant Tron: Legacy. The second Tron film. I didn’t know they were doing a third one.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#233

Post by dahart »

Izkata wrote: post #222
dahart wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analog algorithm described is not described for digital computer. It’s an amusing theoretical thought experiment and not a recipe for actual fast sorting. It’s O(n) when you use your hand for contact and removal. I don’t know if it’s possible to implement spaghetti sort on a computer, maybe not, but I guess if it were possible, it would probably at least require n processors to sort n elements. Maybe the nearest…

Radix sort is probably the closest usable one, but a more direct translation would probably be sleep sort.

Oh yeah I forgot about sleep sort, that is similar and also more in the same spirit as spaghetti sort. ;)

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#234

Post by partdavid »

If you have a chance and are interested in the subject, I highly recommend the Musée Cinéma & Miniature in Lyon, France: https://www.museeminiatureetcinema.fr/>.

A lot of the promotional material highlights the sets, costumes and props from films on display, and they are certainly interesting, but far more interesting to me are the two floors of cinematic miniatures--diorama after diorama of physically-built miniature sets used as "virtual backgrounds" before they were mostly generated using CGI art (which I do appreciate). They are remarkable and remarkably interesting as pieces of art as well as cinema history. This story reminded me of this--sometimes the effect you want needs a tactile realism that is hard to replicate digitally, and is rarely as neat and toy-like.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#235

Post by walteweiss »

0xcoffee wrote: post #4
walteweiss wrote: post #3

[flagged]

In Section 03 there is a video showing the physical setup.

Thank you, I tend to ignore videos when on mobile. Checked it from my laptop.

Feels useless to me, to setup the whole physical thing for the sake of photo that could be just rendered. But to each their own.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#237

Post by doikor »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #152
esjeon wrote: post #82

I've been spending a lot of time on photography (though mostly w/ film cameras) during recent years, and only recently realized this is actually photographed. (It took long because I'm a long-time Linux user, so I barely seen the image.) Many people say this would've been easier with VFX, but I disagree. The image has highly convincing details that would take a long time even for highly talented VFX artists to nail.…

Here's someone recreating the same wallpaper on Blender in 13 minutes: https://youtu.be/EIfrP365iTQ

It doesn't look as good and Blender/3d modeling software in general have come a long way in the last 9 years or so (Windows 10 came out in 2015)

Sure it could can/could be done but it would take a lot of time to get as good a result. Probably easier to just photograph it for real and photoshop a little bit.

Re: Windows 10 wallpaper was physically built and photographed (2015)

#238

Post by FootballMuse »

hu3 wrote: post #171
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's someone recreating the same wallpaper on Blender in 13 minutes: https://youtu.be/EIfrP365iTQ

Looks good but rather too foggy and not as crisp as the original which is much more detailed. Video artifacts notwithstanding. blender: https://i.imgur.com/0BjMWi3.jpeg original: https://i.imgur.com/GGwVibG.jpeg

TBF, the blender version you reference was from an animation, not the first single still render.

blender (frame 0): https://i.imgur.com/XIV8Hma.png

original: https://i.imgur.com/GGwVibG.jpeg

Also, it includes a caveat:

> Unfortunately, due to the nature of volumetric rendering, I was unable to economically render the final animation at a high resolution with enough samples. So I had to resort to denoising, which sadly degraded the image quality and made it a bit flickery.

> Perhaps, with enough computing power, I'll be able to return to this project in the future and provide a cleaner final render.

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