Week 06

More experiments with volumetric video, this time with people instead of cars. I think the results are not that good, just chaos mostly. Maybe there is potential there for a nice one. I would just have to take a ton more videos and experiment to see what works.

I think the problems with these is that there's just too much going on. It would be better with less people and more uniform / controlled movement. The location i took the videos from could be better as well. When people get too close their feet are cut off, which breaks the immersion. Would be better if I could be further away so that it was possible for people to go off to the side, similar to how the cars turn.

Also, if i took more time isolating the people properly i think the results could look better as well. These are all very rough.

I think this project is easier to monetize than previous weeks experiment. With this i could make a series of different videos. Would also be nice if i could port it to web so that it could be interactive.

Week 05

Made with three.js. The gas price is retrieved via the Etherscan API and displayed on the left in GWEI. This is then used to drive the displacement on the sphere. Everytime an action is performed on the Ethereum blockchain a gas fee has to be paid.

However, using an API is a little bit unpredictable. If any changes are made to how it works it could potentially break it entirely. As i can't make any changes to it after its minted it could prove a problem if the API stops working or if the value of Ethereum increases a lot and breaks the displacement

Another problem is that the gas price doesn't fluctuate that much it hovers around the same numbers mostly with some dips outside of this. As a result the displacement strength doesn't change that much. I could artifically create some dips to make it more random.

Going forward i could try to explore different models. E.g. maybe i could have Greta Thunberg's head (part of popular culture and also a well known environmental activist. Don't think she has ever spoken on NFTs unfortunately) instead with changing emotions. Alternatively do the same displacement on the head. Also adding a back up for the interaction would be nice as well, not just the gas price.

Week 04

This is a continuation of last weeks experiment, just with transparent images.

It uses volume rendering / voxel rendering which is a way to render 2D "cross sections" as 3D forms. In this experiment, instead of using a dataset of slices, a video sequence is used.

I think the final result looks pretty nice, almost like long exposure photogrammetry. Reminds me a little bit of particle systems / magic effects. However i think the primary thing i like about it is the depth. It feels like a video not confined to a "2D space".

It's almost like a 3D representation of a four dimensional object. You can "see" time / the trajectory of objects.

To isolate the lights, the alpha channel is switched to the luminance channel in after effects.

Going forward, one way is to take a bunch of different videos (or make some simple animations using primitives) to explore what gives nice results / hopefully discover a theme that can be developed further. So far the thing that works the best is cars moving towards or away from the camera. Could be interesting to try with people and see if any patterns occur.

Another project would be about connecting the ETH gas fee to an object. High gas fee means that there's a lot of traffic on the ETH blockchain. Maybe i can connect the price to the decay / dissolution of an object. This is however a very linear way of going about it.

I think this project would be best if i did it as an interactive NFT, which can be done on for example hic et nunc.

Week 03

More experiments in openframeworks. This time with "temporal slices" / frame offset. I think the first experiment works the best. Could be nice to try with real time video feed e.g. from webcam or a live stream. I think it would be better if the source was more abstract as well. Maybe if i could erase elements from the video as well.

Week 02

This is also far from an original idea and mostly just a drawing experiment. Dollar store version Beeple / Simon Stålenhag. Going forward I think I'd prefer to explore something more similar to last weeks experiment.