London design and motion studio Panoply (whose best work we track here) just dropped us the latest in their ongoing series of CG experiments, an exploration of data and dimensional intersections called Manifold.

Mark Lindner, CD at Panoply: “The film is inspired by the directness of early computers, where hardware and data felt raw and immediate, combined with the exploration of how higher dimensions might intersect our 3D reality and reveal themselves in our world – much like how a 3D object creates a 2D shape when intersecting a plane.

“We started by recording attributes from the 3D objects using rasterization within Houdini (COPs), generating image sequences that captured essential properties such as ID, color, and density. These image sequences are later displayed on the monitors in the film, adding a visual element to the narrative.
 

“The film is inspired by the directness of early computers… combined with the exploration of how higher dimensions might intersect our 3D reality.”

 
“Simultaneously, the data from these attributes are fed into the Houdini vellum solver, which continuously updates the density and rest lengths of the fabrics in the film. This frame-by-frame update results in the fabrics evolving in response to the geometry’s influence, creating a constantly shifting and responsive surface.

“For the end titles, we broke up the type by slicing and packing the polygons. Using a bounding box, we created a falloff that distorted the positions of the polygons, mirroring the motion of the scrolling consoles seen in the video. These polygons were continuously recut to create a glitchy appearance.

“The type itself visually stretches through time, as if being scanned like the 3D objects, hinting at the rawness of data. We used SDF shapes in COPs to create simple tileable patterns, which were then mapped onto the UVs of the polygons, adding a procedural texture that reinforces this theme of raw, evolving data.”
 
 

 
Production: Panoply
Direction: Panoply

Audio: Human Robot Soul