u/Anthromod

So this was more a way to understand the sort of processing required to get a CT type scan, rather than focusing on a cgi trick. So a CT scanner works by combining many x-ray images together in a way that lets you build 2d slices through the body.

To mimic this effect I first built a density grid for a hollow Suzanne. This was harder than it sounds because the various mesh to grid nodes get rid of the interior structure, so I reused a hollow check from my custom sdf tools and used that.

I then built a system where mesh lines would cross from point to point. Basically each point would sample the grid density and use that as part of a function to mimic absorption. I got some weird behaviour when using the grid sample value directly, so instead stored it on the point and then pulled it as a named attribute. Then I found the total loss along each mesh line and stored that.

I made a circle and then built the sampling rays between all of the points. I included several adjustments such as only sampling lines that weren't too short (to avoid sampling a lot of neighbours through empty space). I also set it so that every X point was actually an 'emitter', whilst the rest were 'receivers'.

I tried various methods to use the lines directly for visualisation before deciding instead to make a plane and have each of its points sample the nearby line points and factoring each of their total loss value. This then drove a shader.

Various signal cleanup steps:

I culled lines that didn't lose much.

I normalised values based on the max value recorded. It explains why some parts get brighter or darker suddenly. Because an area starts/stops being in the image.

Squared the normalised value.

I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other steps that would be realistically required for a real CT scanner software. I can get better images by increasing various values, but they tend to blow up the time taken, which wasn't practical for an animation.

I've always been a fan of the Deus Ex game series and loved the 'Cyberpunk Renaissance' aesthetic that was introduced in the last 2 games. There's a distinctive candelabrum in the human revolution game and I wanted something inspired by that. So I designed this low poly triangulated design using Blenders geometry nodes and fashioned it off Baroque and Rococo style candelabrums. The diffuse lighting was achieved by printing hollow cylinders in vase mode and then adding glowsticks to them. I want to source a better led light source to them soon.

It was printed on an anycubic kobra s1 combo, in matt black PLA, before sanding, priming, black coat before rub n buff gold leaf. I filled a hollow in the interior with plaster and gravel to increase it's mass and make it stable.

The model is available to purchase and download.

As people liked the design of the hand I posted a couple of months ago I decided to make some more pieces inspired in part by Deus Ex. I loved the cyberpunk renaissance aesthetic and wanted to do something along those lines. Here is a 3 arm candelabrum, a large candlestick, a mini candlestick and a 2 arm sconce.

I designed these using blender's geometry nodes and printed on an FDM printer. I cleaned up the prints and primed, sprayed with black before finishing with rub'n'buff's gold leaf finish. With the aim of keeping the gold on the upper surface of the triangles, and leaving a black line in the recess.

Although designed around 22mm diameter led candlesticks I wanted to replicate the Human Revolution solid candles. I designed single layer cylinders printed in a fairly translucent white pla. I then experimented with additional diffusing layers within to make more uniform lights. I didn't have a good led light source, so these images are using blue glowsticks! I'll try to source something better in future.

To those who want to print it I'm offering the mini candlestick for free and the larger candlestick and the candelabrum for sale. The triangles are tricky to print as their small flat surface really makes ringing stand out, so might be best to try printing the mini candlestick first. Let me know if there's any other things that would be cool to make in this style.

Also just finished replaying Deus Ex and Invisible war in the last week, so looking forward to replaying HR and MD again.

Eye saccades are one of the elements that can make a character feel alive. I'd wanted to make a procedural method to achieve this in geometry nodes. The idea was to select a target mesh and have it move over areas of interest in a believable way. The target mesh had a vertex group selecting areas of interest and then a method of deleting backwards facing meshes and any areas with low curvature. It did a decent job without a specific target vertex group, but I added one to improve targeting of the pupils.

I distributed points over the remaining faces and had the eyes adjust their individual orientation to point at a particular point. Smaller saccades are generated by selecting a nearby random index and moving some way towards it, and the large movements are random boolean values with most of the movement in that direction.

It does a decent job tracking in these static examples, and could probably be made to work in more dynamic scenes. I don't have much experience with rigging so not sure how you'd go about incorporating it into a more classic workflow.

Working on an Isogrid generator that can be used to reinforce 3d prints. Sometimes my lattice generator is overkill and I just need a bit of reinforcement. I had an earlier isogrid generator but that was simpler with only triangles or dual mesh. Almost every isogrid in the wild has a hollow node, and now thanks to the bevel node tool, this also does.

I was thinking about the texture of the Eridian sculptures/technology in Project Hail Mary and wanted to make something similar. I spent a few hours on it this evening in geometry nodes and generated this. I had to make the monkey model a manifold body and then I had to thicken the ears about 4 times so that the procedural re-mesh captured some of the ear geometry.

Basic idea is distribute points on faces on the original mesh, and then set the original mesh verts to the nearest of the points, then merge. Then Dual mesh to get the patches. From there cut the patches in 2, by separating the face, converting to a curve then back to mesh (reorganises the index order), then splitting it based on above and below the mid edge number. Added a mesh line to close the 2 half faces. Filled them in using a n-gon mesh circle by matching the vert positions.

Then 2 patterns, the first was concentric rings which was done with the extrude and scale elements (not ideal as the offset is not even, but I didn't want to dive into that maths again). I used a map range to alter the scaling factor based on the iteration number, which was crude but worked well enough. The second took that mid line and arrayed it a few times based by taking the face normal and rotating it around the line and offsetting. Repeat the offset a few times with the repeat zone. I had to extrude the faces and the mid line out to get some planes that reliably booleaned together cleanly.

Add all that together and then used the sdf offset to build the lines. The actual voxel density is quite low, but that fit the character of the xenonite in PHM. Then a simple with the glow of Adrian coming from underneath.

There's a lot of potential improvement that could be made to it, but I didn't have the time to take it any further. Maybe I'll come back to it soon and get it more in line with the film.

I altered my Blender lattice generator to generate solid voronoi cells, instead of the usual lattice. I then deleted the cells depending on how many vertices they have within the original hand model. This resulted in the this texture that reminds me of fools gold.

Each of the voronoi cells is touching but not overlapping its neighbours, and this isn't a particle scatter effect.

I printed it in gold silk PLA on my anycubic kobra s1.

Edit. I didn't actually know about the Chiralium crystal similarity. Clearly I need to play Death Stranding. The hand was actually an evolution of some hand sculptures inspired by the Deus Ex series of games.

I modified my voronoi lattice generator to output the solid voronoi cells. Instead of booleaning them with the exterior surface I instead deleted them based on how many of their vertices stayed within the mesh. This led to an interesting effect similar to fools gold like crystals.

Currently printing a small test model with a gold silk PLA which looks good.

Has anyone discovered a good method to fairly uniformly distribute a non-uniform(!) set of points in 3d in geometry nodes? I'm thinking of a smooth gradient from dense to sparse points. I've tried various methods including simulations, but they tend to have some issue, such as too random or need very complicated simulations to let them self assemble into a usable structure.

I've been inspired by the Deus Ex game series since the first one. For the prequel series they developed this really cool art style and I wanted to model something inspired by it for years. I finally got on with it.

Designed in Blender using Geometry nodes. I started with a basic realistic hand and put it through several re-meshing steps in geometry nodes, until I got this (technically V2). I'd hoped to print the different colours but my mmu is far too slow and wasteful for that to be viable. Instead I had to go with this less than ideal paint job. The plan is to make full size and larger versions, with a better finish.

This is a hand sculpture inspired by the Deus Ex game franchise. I took a base hand model and using geometry nodes I implemented several features.

The triangulated surface texture was achieved through a poisson disk point distribution, and then moving the original geometry to the closest point. I had to include logic to handle the fingers separately as they otherwise connect to points on the neighbouring finger.

I made regions to cut out and replace with lattice grids. Finally I took some faces and made the inset triangles, based on proximity to a control curve + some randomness, and assigned them a gold texture.

There's also some hollowing, in order to add material later and give it extra weight. I've printed a smaller test piece and fairly happy with it, but need to do the painting.

Rendered in cycles with camera following path, with one light next to the camera, and the other on the opposite side. Bevel as part of the surface texture, and some lens and glare effects in the compositor.

Music is 'Ancient Civilisations' by Xander Jones.

A simple tutorial for combining objects using SDF's and smoothing their transition.

I'd seen a lot of tutorials to 'smooth objects together via normals', but these aren't good if you actually need the geometry to be combined, eg for 3d printing.

Blender does have boolean operations for SDF's but they don't give the option for smoothing. As it's only a few nodes more I thought I'd make a tutorial.