Time Boolean - VJ Loops Pack

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This pack contains 175 VJ loops (58 GB)
https://www.patreon.com/posts/105371738

Behind the Scenes

I'm still daydreaming of morphing chrome. Machines full of complexity. So shiny!

Lately I have been experimenting with the Teya Conceptor app which has been refreshing since it really feels like playing. Modeling has always been a slow process for me but Teya is perfect for quickly painting with pre-made models. Imagine a paintbrush that laid down 3D shapes. So I modeled a collection of 37 abstract machines, tech gizzards, and pipes. To pair with these wonderfully abstract shapes, I gathered all of the spaceship models that I had collected in the past. Scifi spaceships often have either a harsh angular design or smooth flowing design to them and so I knew that they would work nicely when collaged with the abstract machines. From there I imported everything into Maya and had to work in stages since I had a huge amount of models within the single Maya scene. Eventually I got everything laid out into one incredibly long assembly line. Golly what was I thinking, it's huge. But then I had the problem of Redshift running out of VRAM due to there being about 51.4 million polygons! Yikes. So then I had to break the scene into a series of render layers that overlapped and handed off to each other seamlessly. At this point I set up a camera path and set up a test render to see what it looked like. I watched the test render and was disappointed by how boring it looked. Blarg! So with my inspiration all dried up, I put this project on the backburner for a month.

At some point I stumbled across this amazing piece by Ze.Zima that was used by Weirdcore while VJing during the Aphex Twin concerts. I was watching this piece over and over again because I was so curious of how he pulled it off. Eventually I realized that the core technique was relying on an animated boolean that slowly slices through a 3D model. Then render out the video and apply a very basic video feedback FX so that the Maya render is drawn on top of prior frames. So basically slices of the model are slowly revealed and the video feedback completes the illusion. This works since the Maya render includes an alpha channel and the video is continually layering a fresh frame on top of the feedback FX. In essence, it's a clever use of 3D animation paired with the old school video feedback technique. Such a cool idea! Big props to Ze.Zima.

So I was considering what models I wanted to try out with this technique when I realized that the assembly line model might be really interesting. So I dug up the boolean shader in Redshift that I have used in the past and the initial render test was immediately promising. I spent a bunch of time creating variations on that theme by creating different model animations and camera movements of the assembly line model. Then I prepared a few other models such as a brain, eyes, teeth, smooth human head, wrinkled human head, cat, and industrial robot arm. I combined the brain, eyes, and teeth into the human head and did some various boolean animations so that it would cut out in interesting ways. I had wanted to do many more experiments with various models that had interior details but I ran out of time. But I must revisit this technique in the future because it's just so bizarre and satisfying.

From there I took the renders into After Effects and had to do some research to figure out how to achieve true video feedback FX within AE. Finally I was able to dig up a tutorial showing how to use the CC Time Blend AE effect. Weirdly enough the FX is still natively included in After Effects 2023 and yet is purposefully hidden, but the FX can be revealed by installing some presets that are available from CycoreFX... Come on Adobe. I also had to disable Multi Frame Rendering of AE while doing these experiments since this technique is entirely dependent on the frames being sequentially rendered. After some initial experimentation, I enjoyed adding Vector Blur within the Feedback FX loop since it made it feel like a liquid decay style. I also experimented with adding Smart Blur within the Feedback FX loop but it got a bit messy for my taste. Overall the result is quite surreal! And of course, I rendered out the original videos with an alpha channel so that you can experiment with adding your own feedback FX. I can't wait to see how people jam with these videos in NestDrop.

And how could I resist? These Maya renders were super ripe for slitscan FX in AE so as to add an extra layer of wild abstraction on top of sliced morphing chrome metal. Adding some glow FX really brought them to life even more. While looking closely at a Maya render, I realized that there was some useful color information in the chrome reflections that had been retained from the IBL environment map. So I cranked up the color saturation really hard, added some glow FX, and ended up with some nice color variations. Call up Skynet and tell them the T-1000 is drunk.

https://www.jasonfletcher.info/vjloops/