6m24s of something walking. A something that changes.

July 28, 2020 8:41 PM

BoingBoing brings us Transfiguration, a walking creature that... changes. Here's the same video broken out into a full window.
posted by hippybear (29 comments total)

I was hoping for flowers, and we did get there.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 8:57 PM on July 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

there's an extremely nice-looking puzzle game to be made out of this concept, I think.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 9:18 PM on July 28, 2020 [2 favorites]

Looks like it would run nicely on a loop, as it begins and ends with what I immediately thought of as Butterscotch Man.
posted by Mister Moofoo at 9:35 PM on July 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

Beautiful.

(Boing boing used to be so cutting edge 15 years ago)
posted by growabrain at 9:50 PM on July 28, 2020 [5 favorites]

I kept waiting for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 10:10 PM on July 28, 2020 [1 favorite]

More stuff if you click the little "universal everything" at the bottom right of the video.
posted by juv3nal at 10:21 PM on July 28, 2020 [5 favorites]

Morphing animation was (I believe) developed by Pacific Data Images in the early 1990s. My best friend worked there at the time. This Exxon commercial animated by PDI was one of the first commercial uses of morphine; it got a lot of attention at the time. I still remember when I first saw it at PDI's offices.
posted by neuron at 11:02 PM on July 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

Beautiful.

(Boing boing used to be so cutting edge 25 years ago)
posted by atomicmedia at 12:49 AM on July 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

I liked the concept of "transifguration", we could use that.
posted by away for regrooving at 12:58 AM on July 29, 2020

I'm reminded of this (much more existential) short film from 2007.
posted by belarius at 1:11 AM on July 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

I'm assuming this was made with Houdini? They say "the latest procedural visual effects software".

I just played around with it for the first time and it excels at this kind of thing. To make say, a rock monster, you'd design a single "average" rock and define how it propagates along the skeleton, feed it some noise to randomize size/shape/albedo (but it still would have taken a lot of time adding nodes and messing with the values and such)
posted by JauntyFedora at 3:25 AM on July 29, 2020

The different materials all looked great to me, except for some of the rock or mineral ones, where solid surfaces were passing through each other.
posted by FishBike at 3:37 AM on July 29, 2020 [9 favorites]

It hit the classical elements (earth, air, fire, water) and the Chinese elements (earth, wood, metal, water, fire).
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 3:57 AM on July 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

See also: Light it Up
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:33 AM on July 29, 2020 [7 favorites]

There seems to be an iOS app so you can make your own.
https://www.universaleverything.com/projects/super-you
posted by Obscure Reference at 5:10 AM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Beautiful.

(Boing boing used to have more content than advertising up until 2 years ago)
posted by fairmettle at 5:13 AM on July 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

I kept waiting for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man

I'm assuming this was made with Houdini?

See also: Light it Up

Major Lazer's track was set to Method Studios' 2016 breakout exploration of this technique well beyond "morphing", a combination of motion capture, procedural animation and dynamic simulations. (Also: previously).
posted by progosk at 6:16 AM on July 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

That walk is so confident.
posted by heyitsgogi at 6:19 AM on July 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Despite the procedurally generated animation and all the ray tracing to render the visuals, I love that the foley is probably one guy taking a microphone into his kitchen and bathroom. (Simon Pike, apparently.)
posted by drdanger at 7:06 AM on July 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

The way the rock legs moved through each other was very disturbing. The bubble man dissolving was neat, but I particularly loved headless yeti and all its fur changes.
posted by jeather at 8:00 AM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm embarrassed that I linked to an artist and misspelled his name. Please make that Simon Pyke.
posted by drdanger at 9:19 AM on July 29, 2020

He's a great musician, too, if you like shifty IDM beats.

Vimeo is still always terrible for me, though. I don't understand it, my computer and/or internet connection is not ever that bad, at least not for this long and this consistently.
posted by rhizome at 10:53 AM on July 29, 2020

Beautiful.

(Boing boing used to be just the simple sound of a jumping frog many years ago.)
posted by dngrangl at 1:50 PM on July 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm largely unmoved by this and feel like a better effect could have been achieved with stop-motion animation and old-school special effects.

(Either BoingBoing used to be better, or I used to be worse)
posted by aspersioncast at 4:13 PM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Could someone please set this to "Stayin' Alive"? Except I think you'd need to speed it up a little.
posted by blnkfrnk at 7:11 PM on July 29, 2020

Alternately slow down the audio to match the walking rate, but that might end up feeling really creepy.

I did start some alternate lyrics to Stayin' Alive which went with how the creature looked at that point in the lyric, but ran out of energy on it. It's an amusing concept, though.
posted by hippybear at 8:16 PM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Also check out /r/Simulated if you like this sort of thing.
posted by Rhaomi at 10:02 PM on July 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

Here's Stayin' Alive at about the right slowed down speed. I'd do it the other way around to the video but I've already forgotten the ratio.
posted by lucidium at 12:07 PM on July 30, 2020

That was worth watching. Thank you.
posted by Savannah at 1:05 PM on July 30, 2020