Seven twenty-second films of labs.llc, made from its own pages.

Glass OrbitBlender · Eevee

One procedural Blender scene in Eevee: every screen an emissive capture behind a bevelled glass slab with ray-traced refraction, 180° motion blur, depth of field with focus racks, bloom and anamorphic glare; 16–24 samples. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160 in about 94 minutes of shared GPU time; the 9:16 and 1:1 were re-composed and rendered at their own size in about 14 and 7 minutes.

Hyperlanethree.js · WebGL

three.js WebGL2 in headless Chrome, every frame a pure function of its number and averaged from 64 sub-frames (180° shutter, real depth of field, anti-aliasing), then bloom, anamorphic streaks, flare and grain. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160 in about 16.5 minutes; the 9:16 and 1:1 were re-rendered from the same scene with their own cameras, in 6 and 2.5 minutes.

Iso CityBlender · Eevee

One Blender script builds the whole city and bakes every frame: pop-up buildings wearing the captures, a ray-traced glass dome, tilt-shift depth of field on a 66–150 mm lens, haze and bloom, then a 2D pass for the captions and count-ups. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160; the 9:16 and 1:1 were re-composed with their own cameras and rendered at their own size, in about 10 and 8.5 minutes.

Swiss GridCanvas · WebGL

Canvas 2D drawn into three depth layers and placed in 3D by WebGL2 in headless Chrome, with the time passed in for every frame; 24 accumulated sub-frames (72 on fast motion) for a 180° shutter, depth of field, bloom and grain. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160 in about 17 minutes; the 9:16 and 1:1 were re-set for their own frames and rendered at twice their size, in 20 and 14 minutes.

Ink to LightBlender · Eevee

One Blender scene built from Python: each capture is traced to ink line art, and one shader develops it back into the screenshot. Eevee with motion blur and depth of field, 12–14 samples. The 16:9 is rendered natively at 3840 × 2160, 480 frames in 22 minutes at about 2.8 s a frame; the 9:16 and 1:1 were re-composed with their own cameras and rendered at their own size.

Split FlapBlender · Eevee

One Blender scene built from Python: a board of real geometry, every cell two fixed half-cards and two travelling flaps on a steel spindle, driven by one schedule of 12,456 flips, each a three-frame fall; the pages are captures of the site as it is today, printed across the cards. Eevee with depth of field, haze and bloom, and the shutter sampled 12 to 48 times a frame, so the motion blur is the fall itself. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160 in about 68 minutes; the 9:16 and 1:1 have their own boards, layouts and cameras and were rendered at their own size in about 22 and 12 minutes. The clatter on the soundtrack is those same flips, one synthesised clack for every card that lands.

Constellationthree.js · WebGL

three.js WebGL2 in a headless browser, every frame a pure function of its number. The site's own 206 line symbols are parsed stroke by stroke into 5,358 stars and the lines that join them; a line races out from one star along the drawing and pulls each star into place as it arrives. The pages in the windows are captures of the site as it is today. Each frame is the average of 24 to 128 sub-frames (a 180° shutter and the anti-aliasing), then bloom and a very light grain. The 16:9 was rendered at 3840 × 2160 in under three minutes; the 9:16 and 1:1 have their own skies, flights and layouts and were rendered at their own size in under a minute each. The pings on the soundtrack are the stars themselves: one for every star the line joins, on its frame.