Light painting is something that’s almost always impressive to me — ooh! look at the lights! — but this is just off the charts. The Found Collective teamed up with Marshmallow Laser Feast used a gigantic plasma TV on a track to create 3D imagery. It’s like 3D light printing.
Watch it. Here’s how the creators of the project described the process:
Working with McLaren we were able to process their wind tunnel airflow data and score out paths for individual trails of light. Each frame was then sliced into 650 frames that represent depths of 3D space and a plasma screen, mounted on a motion control rig, was used as a 3D light printer to play back the 650 slices as it moved through the space. We then repeated the move a thousand times for each frame of the animation and with each frame the camera, mounted on another motion control rig, moved a few millimeters so that over the course of the shoot we were able to create the effect of a moving camera.
Without having the actual car, the McLaren P12, they still managed to paint and outline the beast of a machine. The detail and the colours are insane, the camera picks up the lights as if it were a 3D shape, the shape of the car. I can’t stop watching. [Marshmallow Laser Feast, Vimeo via PetaPixel]