There are a few things I don’t enjoy watching repeatedly – boiling cabbage, videos of cats, and anything with Ben Affleck. The one thing I can watch repeatedly are the 3D façade projections being done by NuFormer, a digital media company out of the Netherlands. They have pretty much perfected the art of mapping 2D composites in with 3D modeling and animation. Here’s one of their latest project done on the side of an old building in California.
NuFormer was invited by an international organization to design and develop a demo of a 3D projection on a building in California, USA. The façade of this modest building turns into a middle-age wall, hiding and showing surrealistic elements. It also turns into an African jungle cabin and later into a US metrostation. Even the whole building flips over! High standard 3D modeling and animation, skillful 2D compositing with eye for detail and supreme mapping.
You may recall the Samsung 3D TV installation NuFormer did in Amsterdam. They and UrbanScreen both produce phenomenal examples of mapping video onto large objects. Eventually, I imagine they’ll be able to map video (maybe even interactive video) into large facades.
Projection is nice for cool visuals, but when it comes to working with 3-dimensional data, why not have the facade (or screen) project the video (or geometry) into the workspace, instead of the other way around?