I have been running a series of six half marathons, in different European cities (Lisbon, Berlin, Cardiff, Prague, Valencia and Copenhagen) with some friends. I thought I’d try to create personalised slate coasters with the course maps laser-engraved on them, for Christmas presents, to celebrate the achievement. Simple, you’d think, but it turned out to…
Launch Rockets A fun little project, retro 8bit inspired, animated intro to Solarflare’s Launch (Labs) page. Created in Cables.gl ( I seem to alternate between projects in TouchDesigner and Cables) Cables doesn’t seem to have a concept of persistent particles, so I found a node that someone had created to store their positions between frames…
This was a fun little project combining realtime AI generative images and a 2D fluid simulation with a touch screen. Tapping and dragging on the touchscreen, using this point as the input to the fluid simulation. Then, feeding the resulting images to an image2image Stream-Diffusion image generator from Dotsimulate. A range of different prompts can…
As part of a Solarflare project, we needed to visualise an AI, a large language model, “thinking” when users asked it a question. I came up with a fun point cloud simulation developed using cables.gl and an image to instanced points workflow. The location of the points could be manipulated using a wide range of…
Solarflare was asked to come up with a way to enhance guests’ experience as they entered an event through a tropical garden. We came up with the idea of turning the plants into sensors which would trigger audio and video projection mapping as guests approached and touched them. Using the Biotron from Playtronica which detects…
Inspired by seeing similar map pendants online, I decided to have a go at making one myself. After thinking about laser cutting the silver and quickly realising that my Snapmaker 1w laser engraver wouldn’t dent silver metal, I pivoted to CNC milling the map design into the silver. I decided to base the map’s location…
My second collaboration with artist Jimmy C, to reinterpret one of his paintings of a skull into AR. We worked on this project a few years ago, back when the HTC Vive was the best VR headset and it needed cabling back to a high-end PC to render the graphics. Originally developed in Touchdesigner. We…
When I left home for the first time many years ago I somehow ended up with a kitchen knife which was purchased while on holiday with my parents in Spain as a child. The knife was nothing special but it has followed me around for the last 30 odd years while many other items have…
Combining Augmented Reality with a traditional Masked Ball, this was the concept that Solarflare Studio collaborated on with Head of House. Could we create a system where guests would be able to see each other dressed in fantastic augmented masks as they freely walked around…? After some initial ideas sessions, we settled on the Magic…
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 the Dubai Expo 2020 we faced the challenge of creating a wide range of 3D content for a volumetric display made from hundreds of LED rods. As no authoring system existed for this type of display, I created an authoring and pre-visualisation system in TouchDesigner. 3D animations were created in TD to support each…
So after plenty of pondering I’ve finally decided to try and port my old website to a ‘modern’ CMS system. Hopefully it will be simpler to update the content. I’ve gone for WordPress and after installing some plugins and fiddling with the settings I think I can get it to look how I want. Only…