Marcin Ignac

Computational nature. Variable nature.

I'll be doing a "Lightning Talk" Thursday at threejs.paris for @variable.io, giving a quick insight into our biggest project of last year. Come say hi!

AWS situation is now stabilising so it's good to see how the number of incidents spiked during last couple of days. As AWS was on fire i've looked into service status visualisation we did for Maintel last year. variable.io/maintel-digi...

All great things come to an end. Extremely happy I could contribute Spirit Plant to this year Expo. Seeing people experiencing your art is the biggest award.

Exploring the personal archive. Early UI for reverse image search of my 65k images WIP screenshots collection.

Hyperspeed

When you work on something and stumble upon unrelated look and feel that makes your synapses fire in a cascade. Could be Data, could be AI, or just bunch of real-time glowing cuboids. Up to you.

Eye of Boid

When I started @variable.io I dreamed of project breakdowns like this: hardware, networking, software architecture, rendering behind the scenes, data and lessons learned. Check it out.

What if brand was an algorithm? Our latest case study is a motion design tool for HebbiaAI developed for @pentagramdesign.bsky.social Building upon a stunning brand we've created a dynamic grid that moves, adapts and is intuitive to use.

3d flowers have 3d meshes. 3d meshes are 3d. Let's do more 3d things with them.

I might like the B&W edition a bit more. Have a nice weekend!

My drafting table.

Uint16 Can do 0 Can do 65535 I want more GPU Says "ok"

Another floral project documentation is in the works. #variablenature

Works with FigJam and big Figma boards too.

This really does open new era of 2d/3d mixing in Nodes.

So Grok 4 came out and I always wanted Figma integration in nodes.io so I vibe coded myself one. No more genAI videos in your mockups. Bring mockups to you art instead!

Current LEGO setup at my home studio. Modular and geometric. With a print of Urban Flora #0 in the background.

Picked yet another veg from my garden to feed the algorithm. The flowers should be instanced only on the end of smallest branches but instead they got instanced at every vertex creating this centipede.

Strange new worlds. Following the rabbit hole of broken Spirit Plants.

Spirit Plants depends on a Draft WebGL extension (WEBGL_multi_draw_instanced_base_vertex_base_instance) and disabling it creates strangle looking and repetitive aliens.

It's a trend to overlay visuals with diagrams that don't make sense and are there just for aesthetic. Here is some debug view art where the opposite is true. Real data, broken visuals.

Almost a year in the making. Supper happy with the results! Full of ideas how to make this project last for years...

What if we could deconstruct plants into primitives? Testing idea of breaking apart Spirit Plants into components they are made of. Just like LEGO. But a bit torn before releasing too early: "Until it's done tell no one" vs "Share more. Become a vector (of ideas)." What camp are you on?

It's not every day that your generative art ends up on a stamp released by Polish Post. Great to see Spirit Plant out in the real world! First WebGL / generative post stamp ever? #spiritplant #Expo2025

Cloth simulation with metallic material is a beautiful mix. Counterintuitive (metal should be right) yet feels natural.

Deep work in headphones mode. No I don't need the quadtree. But it looks cool. #variablenature

Instead of proompting GANs for inspiration I browse WIPs of my past projects using a homebrew software. Not enought days in a year to publish it all but so many forgotten ideas and paths not taken. Just wondering if my resistance for AI is just a comfort zone. Bg by www.instagram.com/ballonandon

noise-streams-flat-2024-07-29 Living, breathing, self-intersecting. One of our WIP for Maintel Digital Landscape that didn't make it into the production. Would love to see it on a big screen one day.

Stunning photos of our artwork Spirit Plant in Poland Pavillion at Osaka Expo 25. Congrats to the whole Variable team: @marcinignac.bsky.social (Art Direction and Generative Design), @dmnsgn.me (Technical Lead & Creative Development), Daim Yoon (UX and UI Design) and Molly May (Research and PM).

Messing with tree structures and multi light setup.

Another award for our work with JKR for Centersquare. Wooden D&AD pencil and a shortlist!

Some projects don't see the light of the day. Forever forgotten in my screenshot folder... But what to do if you are still in love with them?

Should we start Spirt Plant wallpaper collection? Even printed ones... Only half joking. Also what screens do you use for showcasing your portrait art? This is Dell U2723QE. Decent 27'' 4k with antiglare coating. Need something bigger...

Some #debugviewart shots of SpiritPlant while i'm working on full documentation. They expose how each plant is made out of modules. It allowed us to split procedural generation in phases, optimise for mobile and move animations to GPU (using WebGL, instancing and transform feedback for simulation).

Failed experiment of growing one flower from a branch of another. In the end we settled on more conservative "bouquet" composition.

Realtime Screen Space Subsurface Scattering (SSSS) also known as "a bunch of hacks" in WebGL.

Me looking at particles and checking if they are doing what they are supposed to. This is the fun part of creative coding and generative design, when thigs go well and creative energy is flowing. Rare happening. The ugly part.2 of day to day reality in next post.