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2001: A Space Topography

Written by

Salem

in

This piece is a reappropriation of the famous stargate sequence from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

small-multiples

To me, that particular sequence has an interesting topographical quality to it. Using Max/Jitter, I applied the Rutt-Etra technique  to turn the abstract geography of the sequence into a traversable 3D environment. The original concept was to break down particular portions of the sequence into abstract geographical details, spread out through a 3D world that the user can explore and discover. However, I chose to retain the sequential aspect of the scene as the sense of movement and rhythm innate in it is unmatched.

 

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The user interacts with the piece through the SpaceNavigator peripheral that allows for 3D controls in the X, Y, and Z axes.

Comments

2 responses to “2001: A Space Topography”

  1. Tyler Avatar
    Tyler

    I was playing around with some slit-scan-esque effects recently and ran across this. I love this effect, especially at around 45 seconds, the 3-d effect is so strong there. How, exactly, did you do this in Max? Do you think it’s possible to do something like this in Maya?

    Reply
    1. Salem Avatar
      Salem

      Hi Tyler.

      The whole thing was an implementation of the Rutt-Etra effect, where you basically map the brightness value of each pixel (assuming it is an RGBA value) into the third, z-dimension value of each point in the graphics matrix. Yes, I did this in the Max/Jitter (Jitter being the OpenGL abstraction environment in Max). If you have Max installed, look for the example in jit-examples/render/jit.gl.render.grid, which basically was the starting point for this project.

      I haven’t worked with Maya before. Do you know if there is a way in it to check the brightness value of each pixel on display (can be the R+G+B value, for example), and take that value and assign it as the z-value for that pixel? If yes, then the whole thing is straight forward.

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