Experiments with Blender Geometry Nodes. A 4D noise texture, fed into a volume node and then into a volume to mesh node. Managed to get a nice translucent subsurface scatter material that looks like weird flesh. Took lots of work to get the animated noise texture to seamlessly loop. Used this tutorial and adapted it…
Several projects exploring Geometry nodes and honing my Blendering skills. So love using Blender, its amazing considering it free! I’ve used Sheepit render farm for a lot for the animations and even for the larger, longer stills.
For the last year, I have collaborated on a multi-user VR-audio-performance project. During the performance, Leslie Dreere movements are used to drive generative VR visuals and an audio soundtrack. Up to 4 viewers can watch in VR, each with a unique perspective on Leslies performance. I developed the VR and multi-user communications using Unity which…
For Easter, I thought I’d have a go at creating bespoke chocolate versions of our mascot, Renaii. The first step was model cleanup and prep for 3D printing, making it watertight using Blender. The model was printed on my Snapmaker A350. Next, I created moulds using food-safe silicon rubber. One of the toughest parts was…
3D printers are great! But they are slow… Timelapse speeds up slow things and makes them more interesting to watch… so, why not record time-lapses of some prints… This was the idea that lead me on a long journey to capture the best possible 3D printing timelapses. It turns out that I’m not the first…
Glitch art made with Cables.gl as part of a POC around making art accessible. Using touch, voice, or movement triggers the glitch effect. Had lots of fun trying out loads of different glitch effects and mixing them all together.
After 23 years dining around the first table I made, with so many great memories, its overdue time for an upgrade! The first table was made with the skills and tools I had at the time but it was getting a little warped making plates wobble and showing its age. I had been thinking about…
More experiments with Cables.gl This time trying to create an interactive element for Solarflare Studios home page. This is my largest and most complex node graph yet. I managed to implement a particle system with persistent storage for the position, velocity, etc using a circular graph wiring, despite Cables not really supporting this. Try the…
Audio reactive project using cables.gl a node-based visual programming environment for WebGL. Really fun to use, similar to touch designer but you can publish your creations straight to the web. This needs a fairly decent graphics card to get full framerate. The plugin for the live version below seems to have a glitch with the…
Creation of an interactive WebGL background for the Digital Sanctuary of the Helsinki Fashion Week website. We were approached to help create part of this new fashion initiative and through the course of various discussions settled on using three.js and Javascript to code the 3D interactive page. The main element the orb or stimulator used…
Another simple but fun SparkAR filter to blur the live camera image based on the strength of the audio detected. The blur splits the image into RGB and shifts the colours different amounts similar to the chromatic aberration lens effect. SparkAR patch graph editor is a bit like using TouchDesigner and a nice way of…
Creating beautiful sculptures derived from the state of a persons mind. The MindSculpture data visualisations use a combination of accelerometer sensor readings for movement and pulse sensors for heart rate. These are captured from a users wearable or smartphone using a logging app. This data is then processed in OpenOffice Calc to smooth, combine axis,…
A quick project in response to the current Coronavirus pandemic to visualise social distancing. Using TouchDesigner for the visuals and TSPS to track blobs and send position over OSG. Posted on LinkedIn as part of the Solarflare Studio Labs work. Love using TouchDesigner, it’s so nice to work with!
Trying to create a single line portrait for the Processing day event in Bournemouth. I wanted a project that the public could engage with and which could be used with a plotter which some of the others are building. Bumbled across some single-line drawings on Pinterest and thought that would be good to try and…
Came across this stone on Etsy while looking for something special for Julies 15th wedding anniversary ring. The traditional stone is rock crystal which is basically quartz or ruby so I though some reddish quartz would cover both. The stone has little multicoloured flecks throughout which makes it looks like a cloud of confetti…
The latest bit of woodturning. A large, holey chunk of horse chestnut wood I ‘liberated’ from the park over the road. Only just managed to get the log on the back of the bike and cycle it home as it was so heavy. Chainsawed it in half to make two bowls. It nearly shook the…
Turning project to try and create a perfect sphere using a nice hollow log I found in the churchyard next door. I did a bit of googling on how to create a sphere and using a deceptively simple method of turning it on each of its three-axis it comes out perfectly. It was made a…
Project to make an end grain chopping board from lots of small yew logs I have been saving from a tree in the garden for the past few years. after watching lots of ‘how to’ videos I was inspired to try and make my own. As suspected, cutting all the little logs square took hours but was…
TouchDesigner generative real-time audio reactive ident visual for Inition. Looking to advance my TouchDesigner skills I embarked on creating a new real-time ident generator for the latest Inition branding, a very minimal looking network of lines and polygons. Using a particle system, a Python script finds each points nearest neighbours in 3D space. These are…
This was my first use of Gold for a ring for Julie’s 14th wedding anniversary gift. Bit more nerve-wracking than working with silver but it turned out nice in the end, the opal seems to go well with the gold ring and really catches the light in a rainbow of colours. I managed to lose…
Been knocking out bowls since we last spoke, 6 new ones, yew, ash, walnut, sycamore, more yew and more ash. Some of the ash came from the local wood yard, been offering to take away their knotty bits that they can’t split. The yew is the last of Dads logs from ~1995, very well…
I’ve been working on this for a few weeks on and off, kept coming back to it as I learnt more, tweaking until I was happy. Modeled crystals with a tiny bit of bevel on the edges so they don’t look unnaturally sharp. Bit of vertex bevel on some of the points to make them…
Created using a particle system of metaballs with just touching field strengths. Meshed, decimated heavily, wrote a python script to subdivide all the separate objects and spherify them a little. nice SSS material and depth of field camera. glowing filament lights were created by tracing the paths of a turbulent particle system movement then an…
Some kind of DNA but not of Earth. Created a nice pearl like Subsurface Scatter material on the spheres. Part of my learning Blender series. Rendered with the help of Sheepit renderfarm.
Here are the latest few pictures in this project. Trying to teach my self Blender and work on some nice CGI pix at the same time. This was made from a single cylinder, a displacement modifier, and a few simple deform bend modifiers, then the textured with the same stretched image as the displace with…
This was a quick ring for Julies birthday present. I spotted the design online and liked the unusual stone shape. It reminds me of a blue gas flame from a soldering torch. Tried a hammered texture on the ring but not sure if it really worked. Still, overall a nice ring.
Simple pair of earrings with a flower shaped domed back and a half drilled peacock pearl stuck to a post in the middle. I’ve been meaning to finish these off for a year or more and finally got round to them. Also got to try out my homemade barrel polisher, gripping a hexagonal jam jar…
Nice matching pare of crazy lace agate stones. Mounted with a simple wire claw setting. Makes a change from all the rings. Jules got these for Christmas 2017.
Been collecting most of my silver off-cuts and fillings for the past couple of years, amazing how they accumulate. Interesting to see all the projects that went wrong on the first try.
These two rings were a request from Muriel for her nieces as Christmas presents. By some strange process of design dead ends and iterations, I came up with a slightly raised design for the back which lifts the stone off the ring and makes it seem to float above the finger. Liked it on…
Beautiful quartz stone with organic looking dendritic inclusions in a plane through the middle. Nice simple, minimalist tension setting. This one was made for Mum as a replacement for her pyramid ring that I trashed while trying to resize it, hopefully an upgrade.
Another massive stone (just for a change) clear quartz shot through with dozens of black tourmaline lines, brings to mind the pictures of particle collisions in a bubble chamber. A subatomic collision, tearing apart matter to reveal layers of hidden complexity in a starburst of darkness (loving these arty descriptions) Built a framework of 1.5mm…
Second attempt at a pair of cuff-links. These keep coming our all druzy for some reason. Sparkly stoned which have been vacuum deposited with metal to give them a coating. Used a few chain links this time and think it works better as its a bit more flexible. seemed to all come together quite quickly, guess…
I’ve had this large rose-quarts stone for over a year now and it’s been tantalising me every time I look at it. It seemed to be so curved that I couldn’t quite be sure I would be able to get a setting to grip it, what with it being so large. Finally decided I to…
I’ve had this half rotten birch log sitting in the shed for years, found it in a pile in the church yard next door. Though I’d have a go at making something of it for a change from the usual perfect bowls. After a few false starts trying different ways of mounting it eventually settled…
Labradorite triplet After making lots of rings I wanted to create something big and more involved, little did I know this would turn out to be such an epic project. Matching set of three pieces including a 9 stone flexible bracelet, ring and pendant. I bought a set of Labradorite cabochons stones from Dhorgems with…
Nice copper ritual quartz stone, set with the point up and a slightly offset connection to the ring. This one was given to mum for her birthday. Update: I was asked to resize the ring to make it slightly bigger, while re-soldering the ring the stone became over heated and the copper turned dark grey…
Its been a productive last quarter of 2015. 7 rings finished. Now if I can just persuade Jules to let me give a few away…
Nice ring made from a piece of drusy quartz, very sparkly. This one was given to Becky for Christmas.
Two matching rings made using stones we bought while in Oman on holiday in a market. The backs are pierced out into E & D’s initials. Christmas presents 2015
A small bowl to keep jewellery in, turned out of an old piece of yew, one of the last pieces from dads stock. After Jules lost her engagement and wedding ring because the cat knocked it off the dresser and it fell into the jumper draw, it took days to find. Hopefully keeping them in…
Particularly liked the way this one turned out. The ring has a nice curve to the corners and wears really nicely. The peacock coloured pearl is reflects in the bowl of the silver flower. i did two variations, the second one thicker with a hammered texture finish. the thin one went to Nadia for Christmas,…
Latest project combining 3D printing with Jewelry to create a ring the mirrors the crystal structure of the quartz rosette stone. designed in 3D CAD and printed in wax before being lost wax cast in silver then having the stone prong set. The initial ring shape was modeled in 3DSMax using low poly editing and…
This was a tough challenge in precision soldering getting all the corners to solder without the previous joins overheating and falling apart. Couldn’t quite find a way to solder the last joint without damaging the stone. Tried heatproof gel but still couldn’t get it right. Then I accidentally dropped the stone and the corner snapped…
This is another crazy ring. Many weeks of pondering how I was going to mount this one and after being egged on by Kate to go for the more interesting option decided to mount it on edge. Used my favourite squared off outside ring design with a small spacer to lift the stone clear of…
Finally got round to fixing this project after 15 years! I had turned a pair of grinders on dads lathe some 15 years ago but I never liked the salt grinder. The pepper one looked lovely, nice balanced curves and I tried to do something different with the salt but it just looked kind of…
Quick bit of background… Jimmy C contacted us to see if we were interested in collaborating on a project. After an initial chat we came up with a couple of ideas, one of which was to try and recreate version of Jimmy’s painting style in realtime so that individuals could see themselves transformed. I spent…
I had been meaning to make a proper wood working bench for years. So after lots of research and finding some good instructions on Instructables I finally started. Had a hairy moment trying to balance the large sheet of plywood on top of the car but managed to drive slowly home. First had to make…
Bowl turned from a square blank rather than the usual round ones. Managed to get a nice rolled rim just in the pointy corners. Had to be very careful of all those spinning pointy corners and not loosing a finger. Nice bit of gum burr, full of interesting knots and inclusions. Rather proud of this…
This was an epic project. Both a large hammered anticlastic cuff and several ritualized quartz cabochons on raised pedestals, like mushrooms. This was kind of inspired by several difference cuff images online and a bit of experimentation and like most of my projects just seeing where the flow of doing takes it. First formed a…