[vel]

Thanks so much for posting! I was the lead 3D artist on this. Will be happy to answer any questions. This took us a total of 6 weeks between me, our unity dev and Rob Pybus (the illustrator). Hopefully the gear VR version gets approved today or tomorrow as that's the best way to view it if you can get hold of one in the wild!

[skrebbel]

Yes, a question. Please don't take it as criticism, because it isn't.

With WebGL out there and all that, and Flash player being quite decent at flatshaded vector art as well, isn't a distorted youtube video with a browser-specific trick among the very worst ways to deliver this content?

I really love the art by the way, great work!

[vel]

Thanks man!

A webgl version would have been great but as we were already targeting 360 youtube, android, google cardboard, iphone and gear VR I think another platform would have broken our dev! I would personally love to do more unity based webgl stuff- there's so much potential there for interactive animation. Like most things, In the end it just came down to money and time.

I agree though, It isn't really ideal that people are forced to use chrome and I think some people will see the undistorted version, not realise what it's meant to be and write it off. Which is a shame. It's early days for 360 video and I hope in a few months time I hope it's easier to see.

This is the first project I've done where viewing it on a phone is arguably the best experience (sorry Mr Lynch), you look silly waving your phone around but it's a bit of fun in the end of the day!

[skrebbel]

Ahh right, so "Youtube 360" is an actual thing and it's made for phone first. Ok that makes more sense :-)

Thanks!

[bigbugbag]

I have 6+ different web browsers on my computer (firefox, opera, arora, rekonq, qupzilla,…) why is this video looks like a distorted psychedelic pile of vomit in all of my browsers ?

I usually like warp records and squarepusher, with this video both their reputation have taken a serious hit. Do you think it is a smart move alienating fans who care for their privacy ?

[stronglikedan]

From the description: "Best Viewed in Chrome Browser"

Using Chrome, it works as intended for me.

[unvs]

Nice work! Was Hariton Pushwagner a concious inspiration, or is it just coincindentally similar?

[vel]

Our illustrator Pybus's work- http://pybism.com/ is a sort of blend of Pushwagner and Moebius through his own acid absurdist style. I'm sure Rob draws on all sorts of inspiration in his work- I can't say for sure if it was a conscious inspiration.

As for myself, I was drawing inspiration from (other than pybus) PS1 era games and artists like David O'Reilly, John Karel, Eran Hilleli and brianbrianbrianbrian.com basically everyone who embraces the low poly (we had a strict budget for how many triangles the gear VR's Note 4 could handle) Thanks!

[mijoharas]

I have a question. I haven't read much about this type of youtube video until now. How do you upload one to youtube, and is it just a cylindrical projection of a sphere as texeltexel suggested? how do you produce it, in practical terms?

[vel]

Our dev wrote a script that exported cube maps out of unity 30 frames a second. I then stitched those together in using the spherical projection node in nuke. We have the resolution up to 12k (6x 2k maps). Ideally in the future we'll have ~8k 360 so that you have a HD image wherever you look but 4k is the max for youtube and is really pushing what an average machine can decode without stutter. Thanks!

[mijoharas]

Thanks for your response. sounds interesting.

[throwaway7767]

I don't have access to my oculus right now, but how does that work? Is there a unity demo executable to download somewhere?

[vel]

We're waiting on oculus at the moment to approve the gear VR build, They've been great but we've been having a few last minute problems with it. Hopefully if all goes it'll be on the store soon.

In the meantime the android and iphone apps have a cardboard mode so you if you've got a cardboard you can have a budget vr experience.

If you've got a DK2- hopefully we'll put out a build on that next week. Although I'm not sure how we'll release that.

Thanks

[anigbrowl]

Oh, this is a nice surprise. Just wanted to say good job - I was watching it and thinking 'Hmmm, it's like Money for Nothing for a new generation.' That video inspired a lot of people to get interested in computers and I'm sure yours will too.

[vel]

Oh dude, what a nice comment! I don't think it'll make any sorta dent like that in the world but thanks.

About money for nothing- isn't it funny how the cg looked so naff about 10 years after it came out? Yet now when I watch it- it looks kinda cool! I hope we look back on this sorta low fi era cg as fondly as 8 bit. Those guys back then just made the best they could with those tools.

[bishop74]

This is great stuff !! Did you actually get a chance to meet Tom Jenkinson as part of your work ?

[vel]

Thanks Unfortunately I did not. The creative director Robin and Pybus met with him a couple of times. They relayed what everyone knows of him really, in that he's a very subversive and intelligent guy. He decried our era electronic music- and I think that's what he wanted to challenge with his album. This guy is a serious avant garde electronic pioneer- his new album was built entirely using his own software, which is pretty unique and crazy thing when you think about it.

[bishop74]

I have to agree with you on all accounts about Jenkinsson. I knew he was building his own patches with Reaktor but was not aware that he built his own software, which is indeed unique and crazy.