• Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program

    Project Render. Image credit: The Bentway
    The Bentway has announced its summer 2025 season of programming headlined by a new public art exhibition, Sun/Shade, a dance performance atop a large sand dune, and a city-wide installation of a moving forest.
    From now until October 5, Sun/Shade will explore the city’s changing relationship with these natural features. The art exhibition aims to bring together a mix of artists, designers, and researchers from Toronto and beyond to deploy natural light and shadow as creative tools, to reveal how new thinking about familiar resources can improve urban life.
    The Gardiner offers a canvas for the new art exhibition and experimentation. Stretching over 6.5 km, the elevated highway’s canopy provides the city with its largest continuous shadow, making the area a natural haven for those seeking sun and shade. This space will provide the benefits of both elements while also serving as a gathering place for community events, public art, recreation, and lively celebrations throughout the summer.
    “As extreme urban heat events rise in Toronto and cities everywhere, it’s even more vital to create accessible spaces where communities can maximize access to shade and stay protected from harsh light,” said Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. “This season of programming explores how we must adapt to our changing climate and reshape our public spaces to balance the benefits of both sun and shade. Our creative collaborators are prompting us to recognize shade as an essential public resource and embrace sunlight as a creative collaborator.”
    Visitors will be able to experience the world premiere of Sand Flight from Norway choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen, where eight dancers and a 50-person choir will descend on a massive sand dune exploring new traditions for changing climates. Carrying on the theme is Moving Forest by Amsterdam’s NL Architects, a mobile project featuring a flock of 50 trees travelling throughout the city, will bring shade to sunbaked urban sites across the Greater Toronto Area.
    A key dimension of Sun/Shade explores the importance of shaded spaces for public health, anchored by a new partnership with The Bentway’s official Sun-Safety Partner, the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund.
    “Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada, and the incidence of melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – is rising. The best way to prevent skin cancer is to protect your skin from the sun,” said Danielle Paterson, executive director of the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “We are proud to partner with The Bentway on Sun/Shade, an amazing sun safety initiative that emphasizes the importance of accessible public shade in Toronto.”
    For more information, click here.
    The post Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program appeared first on Canadian Architect.
    #sun #shade #take #centre #stage
    Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program
    Project Render. Image credit: The Bentway The Bentway has announced its summer 2025 season of programming headlined by a new public art exhibition, Sun/Shade, a dance performance atop a large sand dune, and a city-wide installation of a moving forest. From now until October 5, Sun/Shade will explore the city’s changing relationship with these natural features. The art exhibition aims to bring together a mix of artists, designers, and researchers from Toronto and beyond to deploy natural light and shadow as creative tools, to reveal how new thinking about familiar resources can improve urban life. The Gardiner offers a canvas for the new art exhibition and experimentation. Stretching over 6.5 km, the elevated highway’s canopy provides the city with its largest continuous shadow, making the area a natural haven for those seeking sun and shade. This space will provide the benefits of both elements while also serving as a gathering place for community events, public art, recreation, and lively celebrations throughout the summer. “As extreme urban heat events rise in Toronto and cities everywhere, it’s even more vital to create accessible spaces where communities can maximize access to shade and stay protected from harsh light,” said Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. “This season of programming explores how we must adapt to our changing climate and reshape our public spaces to balance the benefits of both sun and shade. Our creative collaborators are prompting us to recognize shade as an essential public resource and embrace sunlight as a creative collaborator.” Visitors will be able to experience the world premiere of Sand Flight from Norway choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen, where eight dancers and a 50-person choir will descend on a massive sand dune exploring new traditions for changing climates. Carrying on the theme is Moving Forest by Amsterdam’s NL Architects, a mobile project featuring a flock of 50 trees travelling throughout the city, will bring shade to sunbaked urban sites across the Greater Toronto Area. A key dimension of Sun/Shade explores the importance of shaded spaces for public health, anchored by a new partnership with The Bentway’s official Sun-Safety Partner, the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada, and the incidence of melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – is rising. The best way to prevent skin cancer is to protect your skin from the sun,” said Danielle Paterson, executive director of the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “We are proud to partner with The Bentway on Sun/Shade, an amazing sun safety initiative that emphasizes the importance of accessible public shade in Toronto.” For more information, click here. The post Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program appeared first on Canadian Architect. #sun #shade #take #centre #stage
    WWW.CANADIANARCHITECT.COM
    Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program
    Project Render. Image credit: The Bentway The Bentway has announced its summer 2025 season of programming headlined by a new public art exhibition, Sun/Shade, a dance performance atop a large sand dune, and a city-wide installation of a moving forest. From now until October 5, Sun/Shade will explore the city’s changing relationship with these natural features. The art exhibition aims to bring together a mix of artists, designers, and researchers from Toronto and beyond to deploy natural light and shadow as creative tools, to reveal how new thinking about familiar resources can improve urban life. The Gardiner offers a canvas for the new art exhibition and experimentation. Stretching over 6.5 km, the elevated highway’s canopy provides the city with its largest continuous shadow, making the area a natural haven for those seeking sun and shade. This space will provide the benefits of both elements while also serving as a gathering place for community events, public art, recreation, and lively celebrations throughout the summer. “As extreme urban heat events rise in Toronto and cities everywhere, it’s even more vital to create accessible spaces where communities can maximize access to shade and stay protected from harsh light,” said Ilana Altman, co-executive director of The Bentway. “This season of programming explores how we must adapt to our changing climate and reshape our public spaces to balance the benefits of both sun and shade. Our creative collaborators are prompting us to recognize shade as an essential public resource and embrace sunlight as a creative collaborator.” Visitors will be able to experience the world premiere of Sand Flight from Norway choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and theatre director Jonas Corell Petersen, where eight dancers and a 50-person choir will descend on a massive sand dune exploring new traditions for changing climates. Carrying on the theme is Moving Forest by Amsterdam’s NL Architects, a mobile project featuring a flock of 50 trees travelling throughout the city, will bring shade to sunbaked urban sites across the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). A key dimension of Sun/Shade explores the importance of shaded spaces for public health, anchored by a new partnership with The Bentway’s official Sun-Safety Partner, the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in Canada, and the incidence of melanoma – the deadliest form of skin cancer – is rising. The best way to prevent skin cancer is to protect your skin from the sun,” said Danielle Paterson, executive director of the David Cornfield Melanoma Fund. “We are proud to partner with The Bentway on Sun/Shade, an amazing sun safety initiative that emphasizes the importance of accessible public shade in Toronto.” For more information, click here. The post Sun and shade take centre stage with The Bentway’s immersive summer program appeared first on Canadian Architect.
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  • Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil

    Submitted by WA Contents
    Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil

    Brazil Architecture News - Jun 03, 2025 - 04:23  

    html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" ";
    Brazilian architecture practice TETRO Architecture has built a house that is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends in Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Named Seriema House, the 350-square-metre house is nestled in a tranquil setting on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. Seriema House won the WA Awards 50th Cycle in the Architecture/Realised category.To reach it, visitors must traverse a mountain range, marking a transition from the bustling city to a peaceful environment. This journey allows guests to leave behind the urban noise and immerse themselves in nature."The client's requirement was to create a place for pause—a space for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends," said TETRO Architecture. "The client desired an environment that fosters meeting and introspection, where architecture would engage in a dialogue with poetry," the firm added.The location of the house presents two contrasting views. On one side, there is a broad and open view of the mountains; on the other, a dense forest filled with trees. The house is beautifully integrated into this balance of expansive landscape and shaded refuge. Seriemas, local birds known to the region, roam freely around the property and inspired the name of the residence.The conceptual foundation of the project focuses on the harmonious integration of architecture with nature. The house is designed as a transitional space that bridges the vast mountain views with the contemplative atmosphere of the forest. The architecture embodies a sense of poetry through its form, particularly highlighted by a winding wall that both separates and connects different spatial experiences.The main structure of the house is constructed from reinforced concrete, utilizing black Portuguese stones and white stone flooring as the primary materials. A winding wall divides the space and is adorned with the black stones, creating a striking visual and tactile contrast against the white stone floor. This use of natural stone emphasizes the house's connection to the surrounding landscape, showcasing its organic integration with the environment and highlighting its poetic essence.The house is masterfully organized into two distinct zones, elegantly separated by a sweeping, curving wall. On one side lies the welcoming space, a vibrant and open environment bursting with energy. Here, sounds of laughter, music, and movement fill the air, accompanied by breathtaking panoramic views of the majestic mountains. This area encompasses an integrated living room, dining room, and kitchen, all meticulously designed to foster social interaction and encourage deep contemplation of the stunning landscape.Conversely, on the other side resides the retreat—an intimate sanctuary that is serene, shaded, and profoundly introspective. This tranquil space gazes out onto the lush, dense forest, serving as a haven for relaxation and reading, and featuring the exquisite main suite. The thoughtful spatial planning creates a harmonious balance between openness and intimacy, beautifully reflecting the duality of the surrounding nature and the human experience within it.Conceptual floor planTetro is an architecture studio located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and operates on a global scale. It is composed of architects Carlos Maia, Débora Mendes, and Igor Macedo. The firm’s approach to professional practice focuses on a thorough examination of the site’s conditions and the client's needs, striving to create unique and irreplicable solutions for each project.TETRO Architecture previously won the WA Awards 10+5+X with Café House and Casa Açucena in Brazil.Project factsProject name: Seriema HouseArchitects: TETRO ArchitectureLocation: Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Lead architects: Carlos Maia, Debora Mendes, and Igor MacedoContributors: Bruno Bontempo, Bianca Carvalho, Bruna Maciel, Carolina Amaral, Saulo Saraiva, Sabrina FreitasCompletion year: 2024Structure: Cálculo ConcretoHydraulic; Electric: CA engenhariaLighting Design: IluminarConstruction: TechnoAll images © Luisa Lage.Drawing © TETRO Architecture.> via TETRO Architecture
    #seriema #house #shaped #around #massive
    Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil
    Submitted by WA Contents Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil Brazil Architecture News - Jun 03, 2025 - 04:23   html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "; Brazilian architecture practice TETRO Architecture has built a house that is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends in Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Named Seriema House, the 350-square-metre house is nestled in a tranquil setting on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. Seriema House won the WA Awards 50th Cycle in the Architecture/Realised category.To reach it, visitors must traverse a mountain range, marking a transition from the bustling city to a peaceful environment. This journey allows guests to leave behind the urban noise and immerse themselves in nature."The client's requirement was to create a place for pause—a space for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends," said TETRO Architecture. "The client desired an environment that fosters meeting and introspection, where architecture would engage in a dialogue with poetry," the firm added.The location of the house presents two contrasting views. On one side, there is a broad and open view of the mountains; on the other, a dense forest filled with trees. The house is beautifully integrated into this balance of expansive landscape and shaded refuge. Seriemas, local birds known to the region, roam freely around the property and inspired the name of the residence.The conceptual foundation of the project focuses on the harmonious integration of architecture with nature. The house is designed as a transitional space that bridges the vast mountain views with the contemplative atmosphere of the forest. The architecture embodies a sense of poetry through its form, particularly highlighted by a winding wall that both separates and connects different spatial experiences.The main structure of the house is constructed from reinforced concrete, utilizing black Portuguese stones and white stone flooring as the primary materials. A winding wall divides the space and is adorned with the black stones, creating a striking visual and tactile contrast against the white stone floor. This use of natural stone emphasizes the house's connection to the surrounding landscape, showcasing its organic integration with the environment and highlighting its poetic essence.The house is masterfully organized into two distinct zones, elegantly separated by a sweeping, curving wall. On one side lies the welcoming space, a vibrant and open environment bursting with energy. Here, sounds of laughter, music, and movement fill the air, accompanied by breathtaking panoramic views of the majestic mountains. This area encompasses an integrated living room, dining room, and kitchen, all meticulously designed to foster social interaction and encourage deep contemplation of the stunning landscape.Conversely, on the other side resides the retreat—an intimate sanctuary that is serene, shaded, and profoundly introspective. This tranquil space gazes out onto the lush, dense forest, serving as a haven for relaxation and reading, and featuring the exquisite main suite. The thoughtful spatial planning creates a harmonious balance between openness and intimacy, beautifully reflecting the duality of the surrounding nature and the human experience within it.Conceptual floor planTetro is an architecture studio located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and operates on a global scale. It is composed of architects Carlos Maia, Débora Mendes, and Igor Macedo. The firm’s approach to professional practice focuses on a thorough examination of the site’s conditions and the client's needs, striving to create unique and irreplicable solutions for each project.TETRO Architecture previously won the WA Awards 10+5+X with Café House and Casa Açucena in Brazil.Project factsProject name: Seriema HouseArchitects: TETRO ArchitectureLocation: Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Lead architects: Carlos Maia, Debora Mendes, and Igor MacedoContributors: Bruno Bontempo, Bianca Carvalho, Bruna Maciel, Carolina Amaral, Saulo Saraiva, Sabrina FreitasCompletion year: 2024Structure: Cálculo ConcretoHydraulic; Electric: CA engenhariaLighting Design: IluminarConstruction: TechnoAll images © Luisa Lage.Drawing © TETRO Architecture.> via TETRO Architecture #seriema #house #shaped #around #massive
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    Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil
    Submitted by WA Contents Seriema House is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for contemplation in Brazil Brazil Architecture News - Jun 03, 2025 - 04:23   html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Brazilian architecture practice TETRO Architecture has built a house that is shaped around massive, black Portuguese stones for for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends in Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Named Seriema House, the 350-square-metre house is nestled in a tranquil setting on the outskirts of Belo Horizonte. Seriema House won the WA Awards 50th Cycle in the Architecture/Realised category.To reach it, visitors must traverse a mountain range, marking a transition from the bustling city to a peaceful environment. This journey allows guests to leave behind the urban noise and immerse themselves in nature."The client's requirement was to create a place for pause—a space for reading, contemplation, rest, and sharing moments with friends," said TETRO Architecture. "The client desired an environment that fosters meeting and introspection, where architecture would engage in a dialogue with poetry," the firm added.The location of the house presents two contrasting views. On one side, there is a broad and open view of the mountains; on the other, a dense forest filled with trees. The house is beautifully integrated into this balance of expansive landscape and shaded refuge. Seriemas, local birds known to the region, roam freely around the property and inspired the name of the residence.The conceptual foundation of the project focuses on the harmonious integration of architecture with nature. The house is designed as a transitional space that bridges the vast mountain views with the contemplative atmosphere of the forest. The architecture embodies a sense of poetry through its form, particularly highlighted by a winding wall that both separates and connects different spatial experiences.The main structure of the house is constructed from reinforced concrete, utilizing black Portuguese stones and white stone flooring as the primary materials. A winding wall divides the space and is adorned with the black stones, creating a striking visual and tactile contrast against the white stone floor. This use of natural stone emphasizes the house's connection to the surrounding landscape, showcasing its organic integration with the environment and highlighting its poetic essence.The house is masterfully organized into two distinct zones, elegantly separated by a sweeping, curving wall. On one side lies the welcoming space, a vibrant and open environment bursting with energy. Here, sounds of laughter, music, and movement fill the air, accompanied by breathtaking panoramic views of the majestic mountains. This area encompasses an integrated living room, dining room, and kitchen, all meticulously designed to foster social interaction and encourage deep contemplation of the stunning landscape.Conversely, on the other side resides the retreat—an intimate sanctuary that is serene, shaded, and profoundly introspective. This tranquil space gazes out onto the lush, dense forest, serving as a haven for relaxation and reading, and featuring the exquisite main suite. The thoughtful spatial planning creates a harmonious balance between openness and intimacy, beautifully reflecting the duality of the surrounding nature and the human experience within it.Conceptual floor planTetro is an architecture studio located in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and operates on a global scale. It is composed of architects Carlos Maia, Débora Mendes, and Igor Macedo. The firm’s approach to professional practice focuses on a thorough examination of the site’s conditions and the client's needs, striving to create unique and irreplicable solutions for each project.TETRO Architecture previously won the WA Awards 10+5+X with Café House and Casa Açucena in Brazil.Project factsProject name: Seriema HouseArchitects: TETRO ArchitectureLocation: Brumadinho - Minas Gerais, Brazil. Lead architects: Carlos Maia, Debora Mendes, and Igor MacedoContributors: Bruno Bontempo, Bianca Carvalho, Bruna Maciel, Carolina Amaral, Saulo Saraiva, Sabrina FreitasCompletion year: 2024Structure: Cálculo ConcretoHydraulic; Electric: CA engenhariaLighting Design: IluminarConstruction: TechnoAll images © Luisa Lage.Drawing © TETRO Architecture.> via TETRO Architecture
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  • Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed

    Best of the rest

    Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed

    Also: drumming chimpanzees, picking styles of two jazz greats, and an ancient underground city's soundscape

    Jennifer Ouellette



    May 31, 2025 5:37 pm

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    Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin.

    Credit:

    David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim

    Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin.

    Credit:

    David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim

    Story text

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    It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories wemissed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights.
    Special relativity made visible

    Credit:

    TU Wien

    Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: an object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It's not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics.
    They found their inspiration in art, specifically an earlier collaboration with an artist named Enar de Dios Rodriguez, who collaborated with VUT and the University of Vienna on a project involving ultra-fast photography and slow light. For this latest research, they used objects shaped like a cube and a sphere and moved them around the lab while zapping them with ultrashort laser pulses, recording the flashes with a high-speed camera.
    Getting the timing just right effectively yields similar results to a light speed of 2 m/s. After photographing the objects many times using this method, the team then combined the still images into a single image. The results: the cube looked twisted and the sphere's North Pole was in a different location—a demonstration of the rotational effect predicted back in 1959.

    DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02003-6  .
    Drumming chimpanzees

    A chimpanzee feeling the rhythm. Credit: Current Biology/Eleuteri et al., 2025.

    Chimpanzees are known to "drum" on the roots of trees as a means of communication, often combining that action with what are known as "pant-hoot" vocalizations. Scientists have found that the chimps' drumming exhibits key elements of musical rhythm much like humans, according to  a paper published in the journal Current Biology—specifically non-random timing and isochrony. And chimps from different geographical regions have different drumming rhythms.
    Back in 2022, the same team observed that individual chimps had unique styles of "buttress drumming," which served as a kind of communication, letting others in the same group know their identity, location, and activity. This time around they wanted to know if this was also true of chimps living in different groups and whether their drumming was rhythmic in nature. So they collected video footage of the drumming behavior among 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations in East Africaand West Africa, amounting to 371 drumming bouts.
    Their analysis of the drum patterns confirmed their hypothesis. The western chimps drummed in regularly spaced hits, used faster tempos, and started drumming earlier during their pant-hoot vocalizations. Eastern chimps would alternate between shorter and longer spaced hits. Since this kind of rhythmic percussion is one of the earliest evolved forms of human musical expression and is ubiquitous across cultures, findings such as this could shed light on how our love of rhythm evolved.
    DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.019  .
    Distinctive styles of two jazz greats

    Jazz lovers likely need no introduction to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, 20th century guitarists who influenced generations of jazz musicians with their innovative techniques. Montgomery, for instance, didn't use a pick, preferring to pluck the strings with his thumb—a method he developed because he practiced at night after working all day as a machinist and didn't want to wake his children or neighbors. Pass developed his own range of picking techniques, including fingerpicking, hybrid picking, and "flat picking."
    Chirag Gokani and Preston Wilson, both with Applied Research Laboratories and the University of Texas, Austin, greatly admired both Pass and Montgomery and decided to explore the underlying the acoustics of their distinctive playing, modeling the interactions of the thumb, fingers, and pick with a guitar string. They described their research during a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA.
    Among their findings: Montgomery achieved his warm tone by playing closer to the bridge and mostly plucking at the string. Pass's rich tone arose from a combination of using a pick and playing closer to the guitar neck. There were also differences in how much a thumb, finger, and pick slip off the string:  use of the thumbproduced more of a "pluck" compared to the pick, which produced more of a "strike." Gokani and Wilson think their model could be used to synthesize digital guitars with a more realistic sound, as well as helping guitarists better emulate Pass and Montgomery.
    Sounds of an ancient underground city

    Credit:

    Sezin Nas

    Turkey is home to the underground city Derinkuyu, originally carved out inside soft volcanic rock around the 8th century BCE. It was later expanded to include four main ventilation channelsserving seven levels, which could be closed off from the inside with a large rolling stone. The city could hold up to 20,000 people and it  was connected to another underground city, Kaymakli, via tunnels. Derinkuyu helped protect Arab Muslims during the Arab-Byzantine wars, served as a refuge from the Ottomans in the 14th century, and as a haven for Armenians escaping persecution in the early 20th century, among other functions.

    The tunnels were rediscovered in the 1960s and about half of the city has been open to visitors since 2016. The site is naturally of great archaeological interest, but there has been little to no research on the acoustics of the site, particularly the ventilation channels—one of Derinkuyu's most unique features, according to Sezin Nas, an architectural acoustician at Istanbul Galata University in Turkey.  She gave a talk at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA, about her work on the site's acoustic environment.
    Nas analyzed a church, a living area, and a kitchen, measuring sound sources and reverberation patterns, among other factors, to create a 3D virtual soundscape. The hope is that a better understanding of this aspect of Derinkuyu could improve the design of future underground urban spaces—as well as one day using her virtual soundscape to enable visitors to experience the sounds of the city themselves.
    MIT's latest ping-pong robot
    Robots playing ping-pong have been a thing since the 1980s, of particular interest to scientists because it requires the robot to combine the slow, precise ability to grasp and pick up objects with dynamic, adaptable locomotion. Such robots need high-speed machine vision, fast motors and actuators, precise control, and the ability to make accurate predictions in real time, not to mention being able to develop a game strategy. More recent designs use AI techniques to allow the robots to "learn" from prior data to improve their performance.
    MIT researchers have built their own version of a ping-pong playing robot, incorporating a lightweight design and the ability to precisely return shots. They built on prior work developing the Humanoid, a small bipedal two-armed robot—specifically, modifying the Humanoid's arm by adding an extra degree of freedom to the wrist so the robot could control a ping-pong paddle. They tested their robot by mounting it on a ping-pong table and lobbing 150 balls at it from the other side of the table, capturing the action with high-speed cameras.

    The new bot can execute three different swing typesand during the trial runs it returned the ball with impressive accuracy across all three types: 88.4 percent, 89.2 percent, and 87.5 percent, respectively. Subsequent tweaks to theirrystem brought the robot's strike speed up to 19 meters per second, close to the 12 to 25 meters per second of advanced human players. The addition of control algorithms gave the robot the ability to aim. The robot still has limited mobility and reach because it has to be fixed to the ping-pong table but the MIT researchers plan to rig it to a gantry or wheeled platform in the future to address that shortcoming.
    Why orange cats are orange

    Credit:

    Astropulse/CC BY-SA 3.0

    Cat lovers know orange cats are special for more than their unique coloring, but that's the quality that has intrigued scientists for almost a century. Sure, lots of animals have orange, ginger, or yellow hues, like tigers, orangutans, and golden retrievers. But in domestic cats that color is specifically linked to sex. Almost all orange cats are male. Scientists have now identified the genetic mutation responsible and it appears to be unique to cats, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology.
    Prior work had narrowed down the region on the X chromosome most likely to contain the relevant mutation. The scientists knew that females usually have just one copy of the mutation and in that case have tortoiseshellcoloring, although in rare cases, a female cat will be orange if both X chromosomes have the mutation. Over the last five to ten years, there has been an explosion in genome resourcesfor cats which greatly aided the team's research, along with taking additional DNA samples from cats at spay and neuter clinics.

    From an initial pool of 51 candidate variants, the scientists narrowed it down to three genes, only one of which was likely to play any role in gene regulation: Arhgap36. It wasn't known to play any role in pigment cells in humans, mice, or non-orange cats. But orange cats are special; their mutationturns on Arhgap36 expression in pigment cells, thereby interfering with the molecular pathway that controls coat color in other orange-shaded mammals. The scientists suggest that this is an example of how genes can acquire new functions, thereby enabling species to better adapt and evolve.
    DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075  .
    Not a Roman "massacre" after all

    Credit:

    Martin Smith

    In 1936, archaeologists excavating the Iron Age hill fort Maiden Castle in the UK unearthed dozens of human skeletons, all showing signs of lethal injuries to the head and upper body—likely inflicted with weaponry. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence of a pitched battle between the Britons of the local Durotriges tribe and invading Romans. The Romans slaughtered the native inhabitants, thereby bringing a sudden violent end to the Iron Age. At least that's the popular narrative that has prevailed ever since in countless popular articles, books, and documentaries.
    But a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology calls that narrative into question. Archaeologists at Bournemouth University have re-analyzed those burials, incorporating radiocarbon dating into their efforts. They concluded that those individuals didn't die in a single brutal battle. Rather, it was Britons killing other Britons over multiple generations between the first century BCE and the first century CE—most likely in periodic localized outbursts of violence in the lead-up to the Roman conquest of Britain. It's possible there are still many human remains waiting to be discovered at the site, which could shed further light on what happened at Maiden Castle.
    DOI: Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025. 10.1111/ojoa.12324  .

    Jennifer Ouellette
    Senior Writer

    Jennifer Ouellette
    Senior Writer

    Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban.

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    #research #roundup #stories #almost #missed
    Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed
    Best of the rest Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed Also: drumming chimpanzees, picking styles of two jazz greats, and an ancient underground city's soundscape Jennifer Ouellette – May 31, 2025 5:37 pm | 4 Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories wemissed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights. Special relativity made visible Credit: TU Wien Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: an object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It's not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics. They found their inspiration in art, specifically an earlier collaboration with an artist named Enar de Dios Rodriguez, who collaborated with VUT and the University of Vienna on a project involving ultra-fast photography and slow light. For this latest research, they used objects shaped like a cube and a sphere and moved them around the lab while zapping them with ultrashort laser pulses, recording the flashes with a high-speed camera. Getting the timing just right effectively yields similar results to a light speed of 2 m/s. After photographing the objects many times using this method, the team then combined the still images into a single image. The results: the cube looked twisted and the sphere's North Pole was in a different location—a demonstration of the rotational effect predicted back in 1959. DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02003-6  . Drumming chimpanzees A chimpanzee feeling the rhythm. Credit: Current Biology/Eleuteri et al., 2025. Chimpanzees are known to "drum" on the roots of trees as a means of communication, often combining that action with what are known as "pant-hoot" vocalizations. Scientists have found that the chimps' drumming exhibits key elements of musical rhythm much like humans, according to  a paper published in the journal Current Biology—specifically non-random timing and isochrony. And chimps from different geographical regions have different drumming rhythms. Back in 2022, the same team observed that individual chimps had unique styles of "buttress drumming," which served as a kind of communication, letting others in the same group know their identity, location, and activity. This time around they wanted to know if this was also true of chimps living in different groups and whether their drumming was rhythmic in nature. So they collected video footage of the drumming behavior among 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations in East Africaand West Africa, amounting to 371 drumming bouts. Their analysis of the drum patterns confirmed their hypothesis. The western chimps drummed in regularly spaced hits, used faster tempos, and started drumming earlier during their pant-hoot vocalizations. Eastern chimps would alternate between shorter and longer spaced hits. Since this kind of rhythmic percussion is one of the earliest evolved forms of human musical expression and is ubiquitous across cultures, findings such as this could shed light on how our love of rhythm evolved. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.019  . Distinctive styles of two jazz greats Jazz lovers likely need no introduction to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, 20th century guitarists who influenced generations of jazz musicians with their innovative techniques. Montgomery, for instance, didn't use a pick, preferring to pluck the strings with his thumb—a method he developed because he practiced at night after working all day as a machinist and didn't want to wake his children or neighbors. Pass developed his own range of picking techniques, including fingerpicking, hybrid picking, and "flat picking." Chirag Gokani and Preston Wilson, both with Applied Research Laboratories and the University of Texas, Austin, greatly admired both Pass and Montgomery and decided to explore the underlying the acoustics of their distinctive playing, modeling the interactions of the thumb, fingers, and pick with a guitar string. They described their research during a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA. Among their findings: Montgomery achieved his warm tone by playing closer to the bridge and mostly plucking at the string. Pass's rich tone arose from a combination of using a pick and playing closer to the guitar neck. There were also differences in how much a thumb, finger, and pick slip off the string:  use of the thumbproduced more of a "pluck" compared to the pick, which produced more of a "strike." Gokani and Wilson think their model could be used to synthesize digital guitars with a more realistic sound, as well as helping guitarists better emulate Pass and Montgomery. Sounds of an ancient underground city Credit: Sezin Nas Turkey is home to the underground city Derinkuyu, originally carved out inside soft volcanic rock around the 8th century BCE. It was later expanded to include four main ventilation channelsserving seven levels, which could be closed off from the inside with a large rolling stone. The city could hold up to 20,000 people and it  was connected to another underground city, Kaymakli, via tunnels. Derinkuyu helped protect Arab Muslims during the Arab-Byzantine wars, served as a refuge from the Ottomans in the 14th century, and as a haven for Armenians escaping persecution in the early 20th century, among other functions. The tunnels were rediscovered in the 1960s and about half of the city has been open to visitors since 2016. The site is naturally of great archaeological interest, but there has been little to no research on the acoustics of the site, particularly the ventilation channels—one of Derinkuyu's most unique features, according to Sezin Nas, an architectural acoustician at Istanbul Galata University in Turkey.  She gave a talk at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA, about her work on the site's acoustic environment. Nas analyzed a church, a living area, and a kitchen, measuring sound sources and reverberation patterns, among other factors, to create a 3D virtual soundscape. The hope is that a better understanding of this aspect of Derinkuyu could improve the design of future underground urban spaces—as well as one day using her virtual soundscape to enable visitors to experience the sounds of the city themselves. MIT's latest ping-pong robot Robots playing ping-pong have been a thing since the 1980s, of particular interest to scientists because it requires the robot to combine the slow, precise ability to grasp and pick up objects with dynamic, adaptable locomotion. Such robots need high-speed machine vision, fast motors and actuators, precise control, and the ability to make accurate predictions in real time, not to mention being able to develop a game strategy. More recent designs use AI techniques to allow the robots to "learn" from prior data to improve their performance. MIT researchers have built their own version of a ping-pong playing robot, incorporating a lightweight design and the ability to precisely return shots. They built on prior work developing the Humanoid, a small bipedal two-armed robot—specifically, modifying the Humanoid's arm by adding an extra degree of freedom to the wrist so the robot could control a ping-pong paddle. They tested their robot by mounting it on a ping-pong table and lobbing 150 balls at it from the other side of the table, capturing the action with high-speed cameras. The new bot can execute three different swing typesand during the trial runs it returned the ball with impressive accuracy across all three types: 88.4 percent, 89.2 percent, and 87.5 percent, respectively. Subsequent tweaks to theirrystem brought the robot's strike speed up to 19 meters per second, close to the 12 to 25 meters per second of advanced human players. The addition of control algorithms gave the robot the ability to aim. The robot still has limited mobility and reach because it has to be fixed to the ping-pong table but the MIT researchers plan to rig it to a gantry or wheeled platform in the future to address that shortcoming. Why orange cats are orange Credit: Astropulse/CC BY-SA 3.0 Cat lovers know orange cats are special for more than their unique coloring, but that's the quality that has intrigued scientists for almost a century. Sure, lots of animals have orange, ginger, or yellow hues, like tigers, orangutans, and golden retrievers. But in domestic cats that color is specifically linked to sex. Almost all orange cats are male. Scientists have now identified the genetic mutation responsible and it appears to be unique to cats, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology. Prior work had narrowed down the region on the X chromosome most likely to contain the relevant mutation. The scientists knew that females usually have just one copy of the mutation and in that case have tortoiseshellcoloring, although in rare cases, a female cat will be orange if both X chromosomes have the mutation. Over the last five to ten years, there has been an explosion in genome resourcesfor cats which greatly aided the team's research, along with taking additional DNA samples from cats at spay and neuter clinics. From an initial pool of 51 candidate variants, the scientists narrowed it down to three genes, only one of which was likely to play any role in gene regulation: Arhgap36. It wasn't known to play any role in pigment cells in humans, mice, or non-orange cats. But orange cats are special; their mutationturns on Arhgap36 expression in pigment cells, thereby interfering with the molecular pathway that controls coat color in other orange-shaded mammals. The scientists suggest that this is an example of how genes can acquire new functions, thereby enabling species to better adapt and evolve. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075  . Not a Roman "massacre" after all Credit: Martin Smith In 1936, archaeologists excavating the Iron Age hill fort Maiden Castle in the UK unearthed dozens of human skeletons, all showing signs of lethal injuries to the head and upper body—likely inflicted with weaponry. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence of a pitched battle between the Britons of the local Durotriges tribe and invading Romans. The Romans slaughtered the native inhabitants, thereby bringing a sudden violent end to the Iron Age. At least that's the popular narrative that has prevailed ever since in countless popular articles, books, and documentaries. But a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology calls that narrative into question. Archaeologists at Bournemouth University have re-analyzed those burials, incorporating radiocarbon dating into their efforts. They concluded that those individuals didn't die in a single brutal battle. Rather, it was Britons killing other Britons over multiple generations between the first century BCE and the first century CE—most likely in periodic localized outbursts of violence in the lead-up to the Roman conquest of Britain. It's possible there are still many human remains waiting to be discovered at the site, which could shed further light on what happened at Maiden Castle. DOI: Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025. 10.1111/ojoa.12324  . Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments #research #roundup #stories #almost #missed
    ARSTECHNICA.COM
    Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed
    Best of the rest Research roundup: 7 stories we almost missed Also: drumming chimpanzees, picking styles of two jazz greats, and an ancient underground city's soundscape Jennifer Ouellette – May 31, 2025 5:37 pm | 4 Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Time lapse photos show a new ping-pong-playing robot performing a top spin. Credit: David Nguyen, Kendrick Cancio and Sangbae Kim Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more It's a regrettable reality that there is never time to cover all the interesting scientific stories we come across each month. In the past, we've featured year-end roundups of cool science stories we (almost) missed. This year, we're experimenting with a monthly collection. May's list includes a nifty experiment to make a predicted effect of special relativity visible; a ping-pong playing robot that can return hits with 88 percent accuracy; and the discovery of the rare genetic mutation that makes orange cats orange, among other highlights. Special relativity made visible Credit: TU Wien Perhaps the most well-known feature of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity is time dilation and length contraction. In 1959, two physicists predicted another feature of relativistic motion: an object moving near the speed of light should also appear to be rotated. It's not been possible to demonstrate this experimentally, however—until now. Physicists at the Vienna University of Technology figured out how to reproduce this rotational effect in the lab using laser pulses and precision cameras, according to a paper published in the journal Communications Physics. They found their inspiration in art, specifically an earlier collaboration with an artist named Enar de Dios Rodriguez, who collaborated with VUT and the University of Vienna on a project involving ultra-fast photography and slow light. For this latest research, they used objects shaped like a cube and a sphere and moved them around the lab while zapping them with ultrashort laser pulses, recording the flashes with a high-speed camera. Getting the timing just right effectively yields similar results to a light speed of 2 m/s. After photographing the objects many times using this method, the team then combined the still images into a single image. The results: the cube looked twisted and the sphere's North Pole was in a different location—a demonstration of the rotational effect predicted back in 1959. DOI: Communications Physics, 2025. 10.1038/s42005-025-02003-6  (About DOIs). Drumming chimpanzees A chimpanzee feeling the rhythm. Credit: Current Biology/Eleuteri et al., 2025. Chimpanzees are known to "drum" on the roots of trees as a means of communication, often combining that action with what are known as "pant-hoot" vocalizations (see above video). Scientists have found that the chimps' drumming exhibits key elements of musical rhythm much like humans, according to  a paper published in the journal Current Biology—specifically non-random timing and isochrony. And chimps from different geographical regions have different drumming rhythms. Back in 2022, the same team observed that individual chimps had unique styles of "buttress drumming," which served as a kind of communication, letting others in the same group know their identity, location, and activity. This time around they wanted to know if this was also true of chimps living in different groups and whether their drumming was rhythmic in nature. So they collected video footage of the drumming behavior among 11 chimpanzee communities across six populations in East Africa (Uganda) and West Africa (Ivory Coast), amounting to 371 drumming bouts. Their analysis of the drum patterns confirmed their hypothesis. The western chimps drummed in regularly spaced hits, used faster tempos, and started drumming earlier during their pant-hoot vocalizations. Eastern chimps would alternate between shorter and longer spaced hits. Since this kind of rhythmic percussion is one of the earliest evolved forms of human musical expression and is ubiquitous across cultures, findings such as this could shed light on how our love of rhythm evolved. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.04.019  (About DOIs). Distinctive styles of two jazz greats Jazz lovers likely need no introduction to Joe Pass and Wes Montgomery, 20th century guitarists who influenced generations of jazz musicians with their innovative techniques. Montgomery, for instance, didn't use a pick, preferring to pluck the strings with his thumb—a method he developed because he practiced at night after working all day as a machinist and didn't want to wake his children or neighbors. Pass developed his own range of picking techniques, including fingerpicking, hybrid picking, and "flat picking." Chirag Gokani and Preston Wilson, both with Applied Research Laboratories and the University of Texas, Austin, greatly admired both Pass and Montgomery and decided to explore the underlying the acoustics of their distinctive playing, modeling the interactions of the thumb, fingers, and pick with a guitar string. They described their research during a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA. Among their findings: Montgomery achieved his warm tone by playing closer to the bridge and mostly plucking at the string. Pass's rich tone arose from a combination of using a pick and playing closer to the guitar neck. There were also differences in how much a thumb, finger, and pick slip off the string:  use of the thumb (Montgomery) produced more of a "pluck" compared to the pick (Pass), which produced more of a "strike." Gokani and Wilson think their model could be used to synthesize digital guitars with a more realistic sound, as well as helping guitarists better emulate Pass and Montgomery. Sounds of an ancient underground city Credit: Sezin Nas Turkey is home to the underground city Derinkuyu, originally carved out inside soft volcanic rock around the 8th century BCE. It was later expanded to include four main ventilation channels (and some 50,000 smaller shafts) serving seven levels, which could be closed off from the inside with a large rolling stone. The city could hold up to 20,000 people and it  was connected to another underground city, Kaymakli, via tunnels. Derinkuyu helped protect Arab Muslims during the Arab-Byzantine wars, served as a refuge from the Ottomans in the 14th century, and as a haven for Armenians escaping persecution in the early 20th century, among other functions. The tunnels were rediscovered in the 1960s and about half of the city has been open to visitors since 2016. The site is naturally of great archaeological interest, but there has been little to no research on the acoustics of the site, particularly the ventilation channels—one of Derinkuyu's most unique features, according to Sezin Nas, an architectural acoustician at Istanbul Galata University in Turkey.  She gave a talk at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans, LA, about her work on the site's acoustic environment. Nas analyzed a church, a living area, and a kitchen, measuring sound sources and reverberation patterns, among other factors, to create a 3D virtual soundscape. The hope is that a better understanding of this aspect of Derinkuyu could improve the design of future underground urban spaces—as well as one day using her virtual soundscape to enable visitors to experience the sounds of the city themselves. MIT's latest ping-pong robot Robots playing ping-pong have been a thing since the 1980s, of particular interest to scientists because it requires the robot to combine the slow, precise ability to grasp and pick up objects with dynamic, adaptable locomotion. Such robots need high-speed machine vision, fast motors and actuators, precise control, and the ability to make accurate predictions in real time, not to mention being able to develop a game strategy. More recent designs use AI techniques to allow the robots to "learn" from prior data to improve their performance. MIT researchers have built their own version of a ping-pong playing robot, incorporating a lightweight design and the ability to precisely return shots. They built on prior work developing the Humanoid, a small bipedal two-armed robot—specifically, modifying the Humanoid's arm by adding an extra degree of freedom to the wrist so the robot could control a ping-pong paddle. They tested their robot by mounting it on a ping-pong table and lobbing 150 balls at it from the other side of the table, capturing the action with high-speed cameras. The new bot can execute three different swing types (loop, drive, and chip) and during the trial runs it returned the ball with impressive accuracy across all three types: 88.4 percent, 89.2 percent, and 87.5 percent, respectively. Subsequent tweaks to theirrystem brought the robot's strike speed up to 19 meters per second (about 42 MPH), close to the 12 to 25 meters per second of advanced human players. The addition of control algorithms gave the robot the ability to aim. The robot still has limited mobility and reach because it has to be fixed to the ping-pong table but the MIT researchers plan to rig it to a gantry or wheeled platform in the future to address that shortcoming. Why orange cats are orange Credit: Astropulse/CC BY-SA 3.0 Cat lovers know orange cats are special for more than their unique coloring, but that's the quality that has intrigued scientists for almost a century. Sure, lots of animals have orange, ginger, or yellow hues, like tigers, orangutans, and golden retrievers. But in domestic cats that color is specifically linked to sex. Almost all orange cats are male. Scientists have now identified the genetic mutation responsible and it appears to be unique to cats, according to a paper published in the journal Current Biology. Prior work had narrowed down the region on the X chromosome most likely to contain the relevant mutation. The scientists knew that females usually have just one copy of the mutation and in that case have tortoiseshell (partially orange) coloring, although in rare cases, a female cat will be orange if both X chromosomes have the mutation. Over the last five to ten years, there has been an explosion in genome resources (including complete sequenced genomes) for cats which greatly aided the team's research, along with taking additional DNA samples from cats at spay and neuter clinics. From an initial pool of 51 candidate variants, the scientists narrowed it down to three genes, only one of which was likely to play any role in gene regulation: Arhgap36. It wasn't known to play any role in pigment cells in humans, mice, or non-orange cats. But orange cats are special; their mutation (sex-linked orange) turns on Arhgap36 expression in pigment cells (and only pigment cells), thereby interfering with the molecular pathway that controls coat color in other orange-shaded mammals. The scientists suggest that this is an example of how genes can acquire new functions, thereby enabling species to better adapt and evolve. DOI: Current Biology, 2025. 10.1016/j.cub.2025.03.075  (About DOIs). Not a Roman "massacre" after all Credit: Martin Smith In 1936, archaeologists excavating the Iron Age hill fort Maiden Castle in the UK unearthed dozens of human skeletons, all showing signs of lethal injuries to the head and upper body—likely inflicted with weaponry. At the time, this was interpreted as evidence of a pitched battle between the Britons of the local Durotriges tribe and invading Romans. The Romans slaughtered the native inhabitants, thereby bringing a sudden violent end to the Iron Age. At least that's the popular narrative that has prevailed ever since in countless popular articles, books, and documentaries. But a paper published in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology calls that narrative into question. Archaeologists at Bournemouth University have re-analyzed those burials, incorporating radiocarbon dating into their efforts. They concluded that those individuals didn't die in a single brutal battle. Rather, it was Britons killing other Britons over multiple generations between the first century BCE and the first century CE—most likely in periodic localized outbursts of violence in the lead-up to the Roman conquest of Britain. It's possible there are still many human remains waiting to be discovered at the site, which could shed further light on what happened at Maiden Castle. DOI: Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2025. 10.1111/ojoa.12324  (About DOIs). Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer Ouellette Senior Writer Jennifer is a senior writer at Ars Technica with a particular focus on where science meets culture, covering everything from physics and related interdisciplinary topics to her favorite films and TV series. Jennifer lives in Baltimore with her spouse, physicist Sean M. Carroll, and their two cats, Ariel and Caliban. 4 Comments
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  • CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted

    More chaos

    CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted

    Mixed messages only add to uncertainty about vaccine access for kids, pregnant individuals.

    Beth Mole



    May 30, 2025 4:28 pm

    |

    74

    A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine.

    Credit:

    Getty | Sopa images

    A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine.

    Credit:

    Getty | Sopa images

    Story text

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    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its immunization schedules for children and adults to partially reflect the abrupt changes announced by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this week.
    In a 58-second video posted on social media on Tuesday, May 27, Kennedy said he was unilaterally revoking the CDC's recommendations that healthy children and pregnant people get COVID-19 vaccines.
    "I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule," Kennedy said in the video.
    The health agency's immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page "secretarial directive" about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post.
    Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child's doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents "desire for their child to be vaccinated," healthy children can get vaccinated.

    In practice, it is unclear how this change will affect access to the vaccines. Health insurers are required to cover vaccines on the CDC schedules. But, it's yet to be seen if children will only be able to get vaccinated at their doctor's officeor if additional consent forms would be required, etc. Uncertainty about the changes and requirements alone may lead to fewer children getting vaccinated.
    In the adult immunization schedule, when viewed "by medical condition or other indication", the COVID-19 vaccination recommendation for pregnancy is now shaded gray, meaning "no guidance/not applicable." Hovering a cursor over the box brings up the recommendation to "Delay vaccination until after pregnancy if vaccine is indicated." Previously, COVID-19 vaccines were recommended during pregnancy. The change makes it less likely that health insurers will cover the cost of vaccination during pregnancy.
    The change is at odds with Trump's Food and Drug Administration, which just last week confirmed that pregnancy puts people at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and, therefore, vaccination is recommended. Medical experts have decried the loss of the recommendation, which is also at odds with clear data showing the risks of COVID-19 during pregnancy and the benefits of vaccination.
    The President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologistsput out a statement shortly after the Tuesday video, saying that the organization was "extremely disappointed" with Kennedy's announcement.
    "It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families," ACOG President Steven Fleischman said.

    Beth Mole
    Senior Health Reporter

    Beth Mole
    Senior Health Reporter

    Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.

    74 Comments
    #cdc #updates #covid #vaccine #recommendations
    CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted
    More chaos CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted Mixed messages only add to uncertainty about vaccine access for kids, pregnant individuals. Beth Mole – May 30, 2025 4:28 pm | 74 A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its immunization schedules for children and adults to partially reflect the abrupt changes announced by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this week. In a 58-second video posted on social media on Tuesday, May 27, Kennedy said he was unilaterally revoking the CDC's recommendations that healthy children and pregnant people get COVID-19 vaccines. "I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule," Kennedy said in the video. The health agency's immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page "secretarial directive" about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post. Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child's doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents "desire for their child to be vaccinated," healthy children can get vaccinated. In practice, it is unclear how this change will affect access to the vaccines. Health insurers are required to cover vaccines on the CDC schedules. But, it's yet to be seen if children will only be able to get vaccinated at their doctor's officeor if additional consent forms would be required, etc. Uncertainty about the changes and requirements alone may lead to fewer children getting vaccinated. In the adult immunization schedule, when viewed "by medical condition or other indication", the COVID-19 vaccination recommendation for pregnancy is now shaded gray, meaning "no guidance/not applicable." Hovering a cursor over the box brings up the recommendation to "Delay vaccination until after pregnancy if vaccine is indicated." Previously, COVID-19 vaccines were recommended during pregnancy. The change makes it less likely that health insurers will cover the cost of vaccination during pregnancy. The change is at odds with Trump's Food and Drug Administration, which just last week confirmed that pregnancy puts people at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and, therefore, vaccination is recommended. Medical experts have decried the loss of the recommendation, which is also at odds with clear data showing the risks of COVID-19 during pregnancy and the benefits of vaccination. The President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologistsput out a statement shortly after the Tuesday video, saying that the organization was "extremely disappointed" with Kennedy's announcement. "It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families," ACOG President Steven Fleischman said. Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 74 Comments #cdc #updates #covid #vaccine #recommendations
    ARSTECHNICA.COM
    CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted
    More chaos CDC updates COVID vaccine recommendations, but not how RFK Jr. wanted Mixed messages only add to uncertainty about vaccine access for kids, pregnant individuals. Beth Mole – May 30, 2025 4:28 pm | 74 A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images A nurse gives a 16-year-old a COVID-19 vaccine. Credit: Getty | Sopa images Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday updated its immunization schedules for children and adults to partially reflect the abrupt changes announced by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier this week. In a 58-second video posted on social media on Tuesday, May 27, Kennedy said he was unilaterally revoking the CDC's recommendations that healthy children and pregnant people get COVID-19 vaccines. "I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that, as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule," Kennedy said in the video. The health agency's immunization schedules were not, in fact, updated at the time of the announcement, though. The Washington Post subsequently reported that the CDC was blindsided by the announcement. Five hours went by after the video was posted before CDC officials said they received a one-page "secretarial directive" about the changes, which was signed by Kennedy and puzzlingly dated May 19, according to the Post. Late Thursday, the CDC updated the immunization schedules. Contradicting what Kennedy said in the video, the CDC did not remove its recommendation for COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children in the child and adolescent immunization schedule. Instead, it added a stipulation that if a child's doctor agrees with the vaccination and parents "desire for their child to be vaccinated," healthy children can get vaccinated. In practice, it is unclear how this change will affect access to the vaccines. Health insurers are required to cover vaccines on the CDC schedules. But, it's yet to be seen if children will only be able to get vaccinated at their doctor's office (rather than a pharmacy or vaccine clinic) or if additional consent forms would be required, etc. Uncertainty about the changes and requirements alone may lead to fewer children getting vaccinated. In the adult immunization schedule, when viewed "by medical condition or other indication" (table 2), the COVID-19 vaccination recommendation for pregnancy is now shaded gray, meaning "no guidance/not applicable." Hovering a cursor over the box brings up the recommendation to "Delay vaccination until after pregnancy if vaccine is indicated." Previously, COVID-19 vaccines were recommended during pregnancy. The change makes it less likely that health insurers will cover the cost of vaccination during pregnancy. The change is at odds with Trump's Food and Drug Administration, which just last week confirmed that pregnancy puts people at increased risk of severe COVID-19 and, therefore, vaccination is recommended. Medical experts have decried the loss of the recommendation, which is also at odds with clear data showing the risks of COVID-19 during pregnancy and the benefits of vaccination. The President of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) put out a statement shortly after the Tuesday video, saying that the organization was "extremely disappointed" with Kennedy's announcement. "It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families," ACOG President Steven Fleischman said. Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes. 74 Comments
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  • The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio

    The Split House / Collage Architecture StudioSave this picture!© Harshan Thomson, Abhishek ChavhanHouses•Bengaluru, India

    Architects:
    Collage Architecture Studio
    Area
    Area of this architecture project

    Area: 
    578 m²

    Year
    Completion year of this architecture project

    Year: 

    2024

    Photographs

    Photographs:Harshan Thomson, Abhishek Chavhan

    Lead Architects:

    Swapnil Valvatkar, Arunkumar Deivanayagam, Adwitha Suvarna

    More SpecsLess Specs
    this picture!
    Located in the Sunny Brooks community of Bengaluru, the Split-House by Collage Architecture Studio is designed for a family of four. It brings together nature and privacy through a simple but powerful design idea: a central split. Rather than dividing, this split connects the house with light, air, and greenery, while clearly separating public and private areas.this picture!this picture!this picture!this picture!Set on an 80x83.5-foot plot, the house works around existing trees and blends with the natural surroundings. The west-facing site has both pedestrian and vehicle entries in the northwest corner. A parking space for two cars sits behind a wall, and a clear walkway leads to the front door. Staff have a separate entry from the southeast corner, giving them direct access to the utility and service areas.this picture!The entrance steps lead to a south-facing main door. Inside, a stairwell next to a planter acts as a calm, welcoming space. A bird sculpture on the wall adds a quiet artistic touch. From here, the living room opens up on the left. It's a bright and airy space with two glazed walls—one of which slides open to connect directly to a deck. The interiors use a simple palette: white walls, wood finishes, brown accents, and green views.this picture!this picture!this picture!At the center of the house is the split—a gravel bed between two built volumes, with a granite slab that acts as a stepping stone. A glass wall bends into a skylight, bringing in light. Three slender trees grow from this gravel bed, and a white puja room anchors the core. A bridge above links both volumes, with a curved teak ceiling adding warmth. Nearby, the dining area sits between greenery, with a teak table that seats eight.this picture!this picture!The private wing houses the kitchen, which is efficient and clean, with all utility spaces hidden. Next to it is the master bedroom on the ground floor, with large windows and a sliding door opening to the garden. It includes a dressing area and an elegant bathroom.this picture!The sculptural staircase leads to the upper level. Made of cantilevered concrete treads with a teak handrail, it feels light and open. The second master bedroom above the first follows a similar layout and opens to a west-facing balcony with granite louvers and a swing. The mother's room is also on this level, with its own balcony and a view into the puja and dining areas below. A bridge leads to the second volume, where a family room opens to a terrace and a guest suite has its own balcony and twin vanities.this picture!The terrace level includes a flexible lounge, Jacuzzi, steam room, and shaded deck on one side. The other side is left open to the sky, used for events, gatherings, or stargazing. A narrow bridge at the back connects the two volumes. The Split-House is a calm, clear, and functional home. It brings together family life and nature in a way that feels natural and easy to live in.this picture!

    Project gallerySee allShow less
    About this office
    Published on May 30, 2025Cite: "The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio" 30 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . < ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否
    You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream
    #split #house #collage #architecture #studio
    The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio
    The Split House / Collage Architecture StudioSave this picture!© Harshan Thomson, Abhishek ChavhanHouses•Bengaluru, India Architects: Collage Architecture Studio Area Area of this architecture project Area:  578 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Harshan Thomson, Abhishek Chavhan Lead Architects: Swapnil Valvatkar, Arunkumar Deivanayagam, Adwitha Suvarna More SpecsLess Specs this picture! Located in the Sunny Brooks community of Bengaluru, the Split-House by Collage Architecture Studio is designed for a family of four. It brings together nature and privacy through a simple but powerful design idea: a central split. Rather than dividing, this split connects the house with light, air, and greenery, while clearly separating public and private areas.this picture!this picture!this picture!this picture!Set on an 80x83.5-foot plot, the house works around existing trees and blends with the natural surroundings. The west-facing site has both pedestrian and vehicle entries in the northwest corner. A parking space for two cars sits behind a wall, and a clear walkway leads to the front door. Staff have a separate entry from the southeast corner, giving them direct access to the utility and service areas.this picture!The entrance steps lead to a south-facing main door. Inside, a stairwell next to a planter acts as a calm, welcoming space. A bird sculpture on the wall adds a quiet artistic touch. From here, the living room opens up on the left. It's a bright and airy space with two glazed walls—one of which slides open to connect directly to a deck. The interiors use a simple palette: white walls, wood finishes, brown accents, and green views.this picture!this picture!this picture!At the center of the house is the split—a gravel bed between two built volumes, with a granite slab that acts as a stepping stone. A glass wall bends into a skylight, bringing in light. Three slender trees grow from this gravel bed, and a white puja room anchors the core. A bridge above links both volumes, with a curved teak ceiling adding warmth. Nearby, the dining area sits between greenery, with a teak table that seats eight.this picture!this picture!The private wing houses the kitchen, which is efficient and clean, with all utility spaces hidden. Next to it is the master bedroom on the ground floor, with large windows and a sliding door opening to the garden. It includes a dressing area and an elegant bathroom.this picture!The sculptural staircase leads to the upper level. Made of cantilevered concrete treads with a teak handrail, it feels light and open. The second master bedroom above the first follows a similar layout and opens to a west-facing balcony with granite louvers and a swing. The mother's room is also on this level, with its own balcony and a view into the puja and dining areas below. A bridge leads to the second volume, where a family room opens to a terrace and a guest suite has its own balcony and twin vanities.this picture!The terrace level includes a flexible lounge, Jacuzzi, steam room, and shaded deck on one side. The other side is left open to the sky, used for events, gatherings, or stargazing. A narrow bridge at the back connects the two volumes. The Split-House is a calm, clear, and functional home. It brings together family life and nature in a way that feels natural and easy to live in.this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this office Published on May 30, 2025Cite: "The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio" 30 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . < ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream #split #house #collage #architecture #studio
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    The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio
    The Split House / Collage Architecture StudioSave this picture!© Harshan Thomson, Abhishek ChavhanHouses•Bengaluru, India Architects: Collage Architecture Studio Area Area of this architecture project Area:  578 m² Year Completion year of this architecture project Year:  2024 Photographs Photographs:Harshan Thomson, Abhishek Chavhan Lead Architects: Swapnil Valvatkar, Arunkumar Deivanayagam, Adwitha Suvarna More SpecsLess Specs Save this picture! Located in the Sunny Brooks community of Bengaluru, the Split-House by Collage Architecture Studio is designed for a family of four. It brings together nature and privacy through a simple but powerful design idea: a central split. Rather than dividing, this split connects the house with light, air, and greenery, while clearly separating public and private areas.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Set on an 80x83.5-foot plot, the house works around existing trees and blends with the natural surroundings. The west-facing site has both pedestrian and vehicle entries in the northwest corner. A parking space for two cars sits behind a wall, and a clear walkway leads to the front door. Staff have a separate entry from the southeast corner, giving them direct access to the utility and service areas.Save this picture!The entrance steps lead to a south-facing main door. Inside, a stairwell next to a planter acts as a calm, welcoming space. A bird sculpture on the wall adds a quiet artistic touch. From here, the living room opens up on the left. It's a bright and airy space with two glazed walls—one of which slides open to connect directly to a deck. The interiors use a simple palette: white walls, wood finishes, brown accents, and green views.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!At the center of the house is the split—a gravel bed between two built volumes, with a granite slab that acts as a stepping stone. A glass wall bends into a skylight, bringing in light. Three slender trees grow from this gravel bed, and a white puja room anchors the core. A bridge above links both volumes, with a curved teak ceiling adding warmth. Nearby, the dining area sits between greenery, with a teak table that seats eight.Save this picture!Save this picture!The private wing houses the kitchen, which is efficient and clean, with all utility spaces hidden. Next to it is the master bedroom on the ground floor, with large windows and a sliding door opening to the garden. It includes a dressing area and an elegant bathroom.Save this picture!The sculptural staircase leads to the upper level. Made of cantilevered concrete treads with a teak handrail, it feels light and open. The second master bedroom above the first follows a similar layout and opens to a west-facing balcony with granite louvers and a swing. The mother's room is also on this level, with its own balcony and a view into the puja and dining areas below. A bridge leads to the second volume, where a family room opens to a terrace and a guest suite has its own balcony and twin vanities.Save this picture!The terrace level includes a flexible lounge, Jacuzzi, steam room, and shaded deck on one side. The other side is left open to the sky, used for events, gatherings, or stargazing. A narrow bridge at the back connects the two volumes. The Split-House is a calm, clear, and functional home. It brings together family life and nature in a way that feels natural and easy to live in.Save this picture! Project gallerySee allShow less About this office Published on May 30, 2025Cite: "The Split House / Collage Architecture Studio" 30 May 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1030499/the-split-house-collage-architecture-studio&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save世界上最受欢迎的建筑网站现已推出你的母语版本!想浏览ArchDaily中国吗?是否 You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream
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  • ‘A Minecraft Movie’: Wētā FX Helps Adapt an Iconic Game One Block at a Time

    Adapting the iconic, block-based design aesthetic of Mojang’s beloved Minecraft videogame into the hit feature film comedy adventure, The Minecraft Movie, posed an enormous number of hurdles for director Jared Hess and Oscar-winning Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. Tasked with helping translate the iconic pixelated world into something cinematically engaging, while remaining true to its visual DNA, was Wētā FX, who delivered 450 VFX shots on the film. And two of their key leads on the film were VFX Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and Animation Supervisor Kevin Estey. 
    But the shot count merely scratches the surface of the extensive work the studio performed. Wētā led the design and creation of The Overworld, 64 unique terrains spanning deserts, lush forests, oceans, and mountain ranges, all combined into one continuous environment, assets that were also shared with Digital Domain for their work on the 3rd act battle. Wētā also handled extensive work on the lava-filled hellscape of The Nether that involved Unreal Engine for early representations used in previs, scene scouting, and onset during principal photography, before refining the environment during post-production. They also dressed The Nether with lava, fire, and torches, along with atmospherics and particulate like smoke, ash, and embers.

    But wait… there’s more!
    The studio’s Art Department, working closely with Hess, co-created the look and feel of all digital characters in the film. For Malgosha’s henchmen, the Piglins, Wētā designed and created 12 different variants, all with individual characteristics and personalities. They also designed sheep, bees, pandas, zombies, skeletons, and lovable wolf Dennis. Many of these characters were provided to other vendors for their work on the film.
    Needless to say, the studio truly became a “Master Builder” on the show.

    The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for billion in 2014, which immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds. 
    Here's the final trailer:

    In a far-ranging interview, Stopsack and Estey shared with AWN a peek into their creative process, from early design exploration to creation of an intricate practical cloak for Malgosha and the use of Unreal Engine for previs, postvis, and real-time onset visualization.
    Dan Sarto: The film is filled with distinct settings and characters sporting various “block” styled features. Can you share some of the work you did on the environments, character design, and character animation?
    Sheldon Stopsack: There's, there's so much to talk about and truth to be told, if you were to touch on everything, we would probably need to spend the whole day together. 
    Kevin Estey: Sheldon and I realized that when we talk about the film, either amongst ourselves or with someone else, we could just keep going, there are so many stories to tell.
    DS: Well, start with The Overworld and The Nether. How did the design process begin? What did you have to work with?
    SS: Visual effects is a tricky business, you know. It's always difficult. Always challenging. However, Minecraft stood out to us as not your usual quote unquote standard visual effects project, even though as you know, there is no standard visual effects project because they're all somehow different. They all come with their own creative ideas, inspirations, and challenges. But Minecraft, right from the get-go, was different, simply by the fact that when you first consider the idea of making such a live-action movie, you instantly ask yourself, “How do we make this work? How do we combine these two inherently very, very different but unique worlds?” That was everyone’s number one question. How do we land this? Where do we land this? And I don't think that any of us really had an answer, including our clients, Dan Lemmonand Jared Hess. Everyone was really open for this journey. That's compelling for us, to get out of our comfort zone. It makes you nervous because there are no real obvious answers.
    KE: Early on, we seemed to thrive off these kinds of scary creative challenges. There were lots of question marks. We had many moments when we were trying to figure out character designs. We had a template from the game, but it was an incredibly vague, low-resolution template. And there were so many ways that we could go. But that design discovery throughout the project was really satisfying. 

    DS: Game adaptations are never simple. There usually isn’t much in the way of story. But with Minecraft, from a visual standpoint, how did you translate low res, block-styled characters into something entertaining that could sustain a 100-minute feature film?
    SS: Everything was a question mark. Using the lava that you see in The Nether as one example, we had beautiful concept art for all our environments, The Overworld and The Nether, but those concepts only really took you this far. They didn’t represent the block shapes or give you a clear answer of like how realistic some of those materials, shapes and structures would be. How organic would we go? All of this needed to be explored. For the lava, we had stylized concept pieces, with block shaped viscosity as it flowed down. But we spent months with our effects team, and Dan and Jared, just riffing on ideas. We came full circle, with the lava ending up being more realistic, a naturally viscous liquid based on real physics. And the same goes with the waterfall that you see in the Overworld. 
    The question is, how far do we take things into the true Minecraft representation of things? How much do we scale back a little bit and ground ourselves in reality, with effects we’re quite comfortable producing as a company? There's always a tradeoff to find that balance of how best to combine what’s been filmed, the practical sets and live-action performances, with effects. Where’s the sweet spot? What's the level of abstraction? What's honest to the game? As much as some call Minecraft a simple game, it isn't simple, right? It's incredibly complex. It's got a set of rules and logic to the world building process within the game that we had to learn, adapt, and honor in many ways.
    When our misfits first arrive and we have these big vistas and establishing shots, when you really look at it, you, you recognize a lot of the things that we tried to adapt from the game. There are different biomes, like the Badlands, which is very sand stoney; there's the Woodlands, which is a lush environment with cherry blossom trees; you’ve got the snow biome with big mountains in the background. Our intent was to honor the game.
    KE: I took a big cue from a lot of the early designs, and particularly the approach that Jared liked for the characters and to the design in general, which was maintaining the stylized, blocky aesthetic, but covering them in realistic flesh, fur, things that were going to make them appear as real as possible despite the absolutely unreal designs of their bodies. And so essentially, it was squared skeleton… squarish bones with flesh and realistic fur laid over top. We tried various things, all extremely stylized. The Creepers are a good example. We tried all kinds of ways for them to explode. Sheldon found a great reference for a cat coughing up a hairball. He was nice to censor the worst part of it, but those undulations in the chest and ribcage… Jared spoke of the Creepers being basically tragic characters that only wanted to be loved, to just be close to you. But sadly, whenever they did, they’d explode. So, we experimented with a lot of different motions of how they’d explode.

    DS: Talk about the process of determining how these characters would move. None seem to have remotely realistic proportions in their limbs, bodies, or head size.
    KE: There were a couple things that Jared always seemed to be chasing. One was just something that would make him laugh. Of course, it had to sit within the bounds of how a zombie might move, or a skeleton might move, as we were interpreting the game. But the main thing was just, was it fun and funny? I still remember one of the earliest gags they came up with in mocap sessions, even before I even joined the show, was how the zombies get up after they fall over. It was sort of like a tripod, where its face and feet were planted and its butt shoots up in the air.
    After a lot of experimentation, we came up with basic personality types for each character. There were 12 different types of Piglins. The zombies were essentially like you're coming home from the pub after a few too many pints and you're just trying to get in the door, but you can't find your keys. Loose, slightly inebriated movement. The best movement we found for the skeletons was essentially like an old man with rigid limbs and lack of ligaments that was chasing kids off his lawn. And so, we created this kind of bible of performance types that really helped guide performers on the mocap stage and animators later on.
    SS: A lot of our exploration didn’t stick. But Jared was the expert in all of this. He always came up with some quirky last-minute idea. 
    KE: My favorite from Jared came in the middle of one mocap shoot. He walked up to me and said he had this stupid idea. I said OK, go on. He said, what if Malgosha had these two little pigs next to her, like Catholic alter boys, swinging incense. Can we do that? I talked to our stage manager, and we quickly put together a temporary prop for the incense burners. And we got two performers who just stood there. What are they going to do? Jared said, “Nothing. Just stand there and swing. I think it would look funny.” So, that’s what we did.  We dubbed them the Priesty Boys. And they are there throughout the film. That was amazing about Jared. He was always like, let's just try it, see if it works. Otherwise ditch it.

    DS: Tell me about your work on Malgosha. And I also want to discuss your use of Unreal Engine and the previs and postvis work. 
    SS: For Malgosha as a character, our art department did a phenomenal job finding the character design at the concept phase. But it was a collective effort. So many contributors were involved in her making. And I'm not just talking about the digital artists here on our side. It was a joint venture of different people having different explorations and experiments. It started off with the concept work as a foundation, which we mocked up with 3D sketches before building a model. But with Malgosha, we also had the costume department on the production side building this elaborate cloak. Remember, that cloak kind of makes 80, 85% of her appearance. It's almost like a character in itself, the way we utilized it. And the costume department built this beautiful, elaborate, incredibly intricate, practical version of it that we intended to use on set for the performer to wear. It ended up being too impractical because it was too heavy. But it was beautiful. So, while we didn't really use it on set, it gave us something physically to kind of incorporate into our digital version.
    KE: Alan Henry is the motion performer who portrayed her on set and on the mocap stage. I've known him for close to 15 years. I started working with him on The Hobbit films. He was a stunt performer who eventually rolled into doing motion capture with us on The Hobbit. He’s an incredible actor and absolutely hilarious and can adapt to any sort of situation. He’s so improvisational. He came up with an approach to Malgosha very quickly. Added a limp so that she felt decrepit, leaning on the staff, adding her other arm as kind of like a gimp arm that she would point and gesture with.  
    Even though she’s a blocky character, her anatomy is very much a biped, with rounder limbs than the other Piglins. She's got hooves, is somewhat squarish, and her much more bulky mass in the middle was easier to manipulate and move around. Because she would have to battle with Steve in the end, she had to have a level of agility that even some of the Piglins didn't have.

    DS: Did Unreal Engine come into play with her? 
    SS: Unreal was used all the way through the project. Dan Lemmon and his team early on set up their own virtual art department to build representations of the Overworld and the Nether within the context of Unreal. We and Sony Imageworks tried to provide recreations of these environments that were then used within Unreal to previsualize what was happening on set during shooting of principal photography. And that's where our mocap and on-set teams were coming into play. Effects provided what we called the Nudge Cam. It was a system to do real-time tracking using a stereo pair of Basler computer vision cameras that were mounted onto the sides of the principal camera. We provided the live tracking that was then composited in real time with the Unreal Engine content that all the vendors had provided. It was a great way of utilizing Unreal to give the camera operators or DOP, even Jared, a good sense of what we would actually shoot. It gave everyone a little bit of context for the look and feel of what you could actually expect from these scenes. 
    Because we started this journey with Unreal having onset in mind, we internally decided, look, let's take this further. Let's take this into post-production as well. What would it take to utilize Unreal for shot creation? And it was really exclusively used on the Nether environment. I don’t want to say we used it for matte painting replacement. We used it more for say, let's build this extended environment in Unreal. Not only use it as a render engine with this reasonably fast turnaround but also use it for what it's good at: authoring things, quickly changing things, moving columns around, manipulating things, dressing them, lighting them, and rendering them. It became sort of a tool that we used in place of a traditional matte painting for the extended environments.
    KE: Another thing worth mentioning is we were able to utilize it on our mocap stage as well during the two-week shoot with Jared and crew. When we shoot on the mocap stage, we get a very simple sort of gray shaded diagnostic grid. You have your single-color characters that sometimes are textured, but they’re fairly simple without any context of environment. Our special projects team was able to port what we usually see in Giant, the software we use on the mocap stage, into Unreal, which gave us these beautifully lit environments with interactive fire and atmosphere. And Jared and the team could see their movie for the first time in a rough, but still very beautiful rough state. That was invaluable.

    DS: If you had to key on anything, what would say with the biggest challenges for your teams on the film? You're laughing. I can hear you thinking, “Do we have an hour?” 
    KE: Where do you begin? 
    SS: Exactly. It's so hard to really single one out. And I struggle with that question every time I've been asked that question.
    KE: I’ll start.  I've got a very simple practical answer and then a larger one, something that was new to us, kind of similar to what we were just talking about. The simple practical one is the Piglins square feet with no ankles. It was very tough to make them walk realistically. Think of the leg of a chair. How do you make that roll and bank and bend because there is no joint? There are a lot of Piglins walking on surfaces and it was a very difficult conundrum to solve. It took a lot of hard work from our motion edit team and our animation team to get those things walking realistically. You know, it’s doing that simple thing that you don't usually pay attention to. So that was one reasonably big challenge that is often literally buried in the shadows. The bigger one was something that was new to me. We often do a lot of our previs and postvis in-house and then finish the shots. And just because of circumstances and capacity, we did the postvis for the entire final battle, but we ended up sharing the sequence with Digital Domain, who did an amazing job completing some of the stuff on the Battlefield we did post on. For me personally, I've never experienced not finishing what I started. But it was also really rewarding to see how well the work we had put in was honored by DD when they took it over.  
    SS: I think the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement that I'm most proud of is really ending up with something that was well received by the wider audience. Of creating these two worlds, this sort of abstract adaptation of the Minecraft game and combining it with live-action. That was the achievement for me. That was the biggest challenge. We were all nervous from day one. And we continued to be nervous up until the day the movie came out. None of us really knew how it ultimately would be received. The fact that it came together and was so well received is a testament to everyone doing a fantastic job. And that's what I'm incredibly proud of.

    Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
    #minecraft #movie #wētā #helps #adapt
    ‘A Minecraft Movie’: Wētā FX Helps Adapt an Iconic Game One Block at a Time
    Adapting the iconic, block-based design aesthetic of Mojang’s beloved Minecraft videogame into the hit feature film comedy adventure, The Minecraft Movie, posed an enormous number of hurdles for director Jared Hess and Oscar-winning Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. Tasked with helping translate the iconic pixelated world into something cinematically engaging, while remaining true to its visual DNA, was Wētā FX, who delivered 450 VFX shots on the film. And two of their key leads on the film were VFX Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and Animation Supervisor Kevin Estey.  But the shot count merely scratches the surface of the extensive work the studio performed. Wētā led the design and creation of The Overworld, 64 unique terrains spanning deserts, lush forests, oceans, and mountain ranges, all combined into one continuous environment, assets that were also shared with Digital Domain for their work on the 3rd act battle. Wētā also handled extensive work on the lava-filled hellscape of The Nether that involved Unreal Engine for early representations used in previs, scene scouting, and onset during principal photography, before refining the environment during post-production. They also dressed The Nether with lava, fire, and torches, along with atmospherics and particulate like smoke, ash, and embers. But wait… there’s more! The studio’s Art Department, working closely with Hess, co-created the look and feel of all digital characters in the film. For Malgosha’s henchmen, the Piglins, Wētā designed and created 12 different variants, all with individual characteristics and personalities. They also designed sheep, bees, pandas, zombies, skeletons, and lovable wolf Dennis. Many of these characters were provided to other vendors for their work on the film. Needless to say, the studio truly became a “Master Builder” on the show. The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for billion in 2014, which immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds.  Here's the final trailer: In a far-ranging interview, Stopsack and Estey shared with AWN a peek into their creative process, from early design exploration to creation of an intricate practical cloak for Malgosha and the use of Unreal Engine for previs, postvis, and real-time onset visualization. Dan Sarto: The film is filled with distinct settings and characters sporting various “block” styled features. Can you share some of the work you did on the environments, character design, and character animation? Sheldon Stopsack: There's, there's so much to talk about and truth to be told, if you were to touch on everything, we would probably need to spend the whole day together.  Kevin Estey: Sheldon and I realized that when we talk about the film, either amongst ourselves or with someone else, we could just keep going, there are so many stories to tell. DS: Well, start with The Overworld and The Nether. How did the design process begin? What did you have to work with? SS: Visual effects is a tricky business, you know. It's always difficult. Always challenging. However, Minecraft stood out to us as not your usual quote unquote standard visual effects project, even though as you know, there is no standard visual effects project because they're all somehow different. They all come with their own creative ideas, inspirations, and challenges. But Minecraft, right from the get-go, was different, simply by the fact that when you first consider the idea of making such a live-action movie, you instantly ask yourself, “How do we make this work? How do we combine these two inherently very, very different but unique worlds?” That was everyone’s number one question. How do we land this? Where do we land this? And I don't think that any of us really had an answer, including our clients, Dan Lemmonand Jared Hess. Everyone was really open for this journey. That's compelling for us, to get out of our comfort zone. It makes you nervous because there are no real obvious answers. KE: Early on, we seemed to thrive off these kinds of scary creative challenges. There were lots of question marks. We had many moments when we were trying to figure out character designs. We had a template from the game, but it was an incredibly vague, low-resolution template. And there were so many ways that we could go. But that design discovery throughout the project was really satisfying.  DS: Game adaptations are never simple. There usually isn’t much in the way of story. But with Minecraft, from a visual standpoint, how did you translate low res, block-styled characters into something entertaining that could sustain a 100-minute feature film? SS: Everything was a question mark. Using the lava that you see in The Nether as one example, we had beautiful concept art for all our environments, The Overworld and The Nether, but those concepts only really took you this far. They didn’t represent the block shapes or give you a clear answer of like how realistic some of those materials, shapes and structures would be. How organic would we go? All of this needed to be explored. For the lava, we had stylized concept pieces, with block shaped viscosity as it flowed down. But we spent months with our effects team, and Dan and Jared, just riffing on ideas. We came full circle, with the lava ending up being more realistic, a naturally viscous liquid based on real physics. And the same goes with the waterfall that you see in the Overworld.  The question is, how far do we take things into the true Minecraft representation of things? How much do we scale back a little bit and ground ourselves in reality, with effects we’re quite comfortable producing as a company? There's always a tradeoff to find that balance of how best to combine what’s been filmed, the practical sets and live-action performances, with effects. Where’s the sweet spot? What's the level of abstraction? What's honest to the game? As much as some call Minecraft a simple game, it isn't simple, right? It's incredibly complex. It's got a set of rules and logic to the world building process within the game that we had to learn, adapt, and honor in many ways. When our misfits first arrive and we have these big vistas and establishing shots, when you really look at it, you, you recognize a lot of the things that we tried to adapt from the game. There are different biomes, like the Badlands, which is very sand stoney; there's the Woodlands, which is a lush environment with cherry blossom trees; you’ve got the snow biome with big mountains in the background. Our intent was to honor the game. KE: I took a big cue from a lot of the early designs, and particularly the approach that Jared liked for the characters and to the design in general, which was maintaining the stylized, blocky aesthetic, but covering them in realistic flesh, fur, things that were going to make them appear as real as possible despite the absolutely unreal designs of their bodies. And so essentially, it was squared skeleton… squarish bones with flesh and realistic fur laid over top. We tried various things, all extremely stylized. The Creepers are a good example. We tried all kinds of ways for them to explode. Sheldon found a great reference for a cat coughing up a hairball. He was nice to censor the worst part of it, but those undulations in the chest and ribcage… Jared spoke of the Creepers being basically tragic characters that only wanted to be loved, to just be close to you. But sadly, whenever they did, they’d explode. So, we experimented with a lot of different motions of how they’d explode. DS: Talk about the process of determining how these characters would move. None seem to have remotely realistic proportions in their limbs, bodies, or head size. KE: There were a couple things that Jared always seemed to be chasing. One was just something that would make him laugh. Of course, it had to sit within the bounds of how a zombie might move, or a skeleton might move, as we were interpreting the game. But the main thing was just, was it fun and funny? I still remember one of the earliest gags they came up with in mocap sessions, even before I even joined the show, was how the zombies get up after they fall over. It was sort of like a tripod, where its face and feet were planted and its butt shoots up in the air. After a lot of experimentation, we came up with basic personality types for each character. There were 12 different types of Piglins. The zombies were essentially like you're coming home from the pub after a few too many pints and you're just trying to get in the door, but you can't find your keys. Loose, slightly inebriated movement. The best movement we found for the skeletons was essentially like an old man with rigid limbs and lack of ligaments that was chasing kids off his lawn. And so, we created this kind of bible of performance types that really helped guide performers on the mocap stage and animators later on. SS: A lot of our exploration didn’t stick. But Jared was the expert in all of this. He always came up with some quirky last-minute idea.  KE: My favorite from Jared came in the middle of one mocap shoot. He walked up to me and said he had this stupid idea. I said OK, go on. He said, what if Malgosha had these two little pigs next to her, like Catholic alter boys, swinging incense. Can we do that? I talked to our stage manager, and we quickly put together a temporary prop for the incense burners. And we got two performers who just stood there. What are they going to do? Jared said, “Nothing. Just stand there and swing. I think it would look funny.” So, that’s what we did.  We dubbed them the Priesty Boys. And they are there throughout the film. That was amazing about Jared. He was always like, let's just try it, see if it works. Otherwise ditch it. DS: Tell me about your work on Malgosha. And I also want to discuss your use of Unreal Engine and the previs and postvis work.  SS: For Malgosha as a character, our art department did a phenomenal job finding the character design at the concept phase. But it was a collective effort. So many contributors were involved in her making. And I'm not just talking about the digital artists here on our side. It was a joint venture of different people having different explorations and experiments. It started off with the concept work as a foundation, which we mocked up with 3D sketches before building a model. But with Malgosha, we also had the costume department on the production side building this elaborate cloak. Remember, that cloak kind of makes 80, 85% of her appearance. It's almost like a character in itself, the way we utilized it. And the costume department built this beautiful, elaborate, incredibly intricate, practical version of it that we intended to use on set for the performer to wear. It ended up being too impractical because it was too heavy. But it was beautiful. So, while we didn't really use it on set, it gave us something physically to kind of incorporate into our digital version. KE: Alan Henry is the motion performer who portrayed her on set and on the mocap stage. I've known him for close to 15 years. I started working with him on The Hobbit films. He was a stunt performer who eventually rolled into doing motion capture with us on The Hobbit. He’s an incredible actor and absolutely hilarious and can adapt to any sort of situation. He’s so improvisational. He came up with an approach to Malgosha very quickly. Added a limp so that she felt decrepit, leaning on the staff, adding her other arm as kind of like a gimp arm that she would point and gesture with.   Even though she’s a blocky character, her anatomy is very much a biped, with rounder limbs than the other Piglins. She's got hooves, is somewhat squarish, and her much more bulky mass in the middle was easier to manipulate and move around. Because she would have to battle with Steve in the end, she had to have a level of agility that even some of the Piglins didn't have. DS: Did Unreal Engine come into play with her?  SS: Unreal was used all the way through the project. Dan Lemmon and his team early on set up their own virtual art department to build representations of the Overworld and the Nether within the context of Unreal. We and Sony Imageworks tried to provide recreations of these environments that were then used within Unreal to previsualize what was happening on set during shooting of principal photography. And that's where our mocap and on-set teams were coming into play. Effects provided what we called the Nudge Cam. It was a system to do real-time tracking using a stereo pair of Basler computer vision cameras that were mounted onto the sides of the principal camera. We provided the live tracking that was then composited in real time with the Unreal Engine content that all the vendors had provided. It was a great way of utilizing Unreal to give the camera operators or DOP, even Jared, a good sense of what we would actually shoot. It gave everyone a little bit of context for the look and feel of what you could actually expect from these scenes.  Because we started this journey with Unreal having onset in mind, we internally decided, look, let's take this further. Let's take this into post-production as well. What would it take to utilize Unreal for shot creation? And it was really exclusively used on the Nether environment. I don’t want to say we used it for matte painting replacement. We used it more for say, let's build this extended environment in Unreal. Not only use it as a render engine with this reasonably fast turnaround but also use it for what it's good at: authoring things, quickly changing things, moving columns around, manipulating things, dressing them, lighting them, and rendering them. It became sort of a tool that we used in place of a traditional matte painting for the extended environments. KE: Another thing worth mentioning is we were able to utilize it on our mocap stage as well during the two-week shoot with Jared and crew. When we shoot on the mocap stage, we get a very simple sort of gray shaded diagnostic grid. You have your single-color characters that sometimes are textured, but they’re fairly simple without any context of environment. Our special projects team was able to port what we usually see in Giant, the software we use on the mocap stage, into Unreal, which gave us these beautifully lit environments with interactive fire and atmosphere. And Jared and the team could see their movie for the first time in a rough, but still very beautiful rough state. That was invaluable. DS: If you had to key on anything, what would say with the biggest challenges for your teams on the film? You're laughing. I can hear you thinking, “Do we have an hour?”  KE: Where do you begin?  SS: Exactly. It's so hard to really single one out. And I struggle with that question every time I've been asked that question. KE: I’ll start.  I've got a very simple practical answer and then a larger one, something that was new to us, kind of similar to what we were just talking about. The simple practical one is the Piglins square feet with no ankles. It was very tough to make them walk realistically. Think of the leg of a chair. How do you make that roll and bank and bend because there is no joint? There are a lot of Piglins walking on surfaces and it was a very difficult conundrum to solve. It took a lot of hard work from our motion edit team and our animation team to get those things walking realistically. You know, it’s doing that simple thing that you don't usually pay attention to. So that was one reasonably big challenge that is often literally buried in the shadows. The bigger one was something that was new to me. We often do a lot of our previs and postvis in-house and then finish the shots. And just because of circumstances and capacity, we did the postvis for the entire final battle, but we ended up sharing the sequence with Digital Domain, who did an amazing job completing some of the stuff on the Battlefield we did post on. For me personally, I've never experienced not finishing what I started. But it was also really rewarding to see how well the work we had put in was honored by DD when they took it over.   SS: I think the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement that I'm most proud of is really ending up with something that was well received by the wider audience. Of creating these two worlds, this sort of abstract adaptation of the Minecraft game and combining it with live-action. That was the achievement for me. That was the biggest challenge. We were all nervous from day one. And we continued to be nervous up until the day the movie came out. None of us really knew how it ultimately would be received. The fact that it came together and was so well received is a testament to everyone doing a fantastic job. And that's what I'm incredibly proud of. Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network. #minecraft #movie #wētā #helps #adapt
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    ‘A Minecraft Movie’: Wētā FX Helps Adapt an Iconic Game One Block at a Time
    Adapting the iconic, block-based design aesthetic of Mojang’s beloved Minecraft videogame into the hit feature film comedy adventure, The Minecraft Movie, posed an enormous number of hurdles for director Jared Hess and Oscar-winning Production VFX Supervisor Dan Lemmon. Tasked with helping translate the iconic pixelated world into something cinematically engaging, while remaining true to its visual DNA, was Wētā FX, who delivered 450 VFX shots on the film. And two of their key leads on the film were VFX Supervisor Sheldon Stopsack and Animation Supervisor Kevin Estey.  But the shot count merely scratches the surface of the extensive work the studio performed. Wētā led the design and creation of The Overworld, 64 unique terrains spanning deserts, lush forests, oceans, and mountain ranges, all combined into one continuous environment, assets that were also shared with Digital Domain for their work on the 3rd act battle. Wētā also handled extensive work on the lava-filled hellscape of The Nether that involved Unreal Engine for early representations used in previs, scene scouting, and onset during principal photography, before refining the environment during post-production. They also dressed The Nether with lava, fire, and torches, along with atmospherics and particulate like smoke, ash, and embers. But wait… there’s more! The studio’s Art Department, working closely with Hess, co-created the look and feel of all digital characters in the film. For Malgosha’s henchmen, the Piglins, Wētā designed and created 12 different variants, all with individual characteristics and personalities. They also designed sheep, bees, pandas, zombies, skeletons, and lovable wolf Dennis. Many of these characters were provided to other vendors for their work on the film. Needless to say, the studio truly became a “Master Builder” on the show. The film is based on the hugely popular game Minecraft, first released by Sweden’s Mojang Studios in 2011 and purchased by Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, which immerses players in a low-res, pixelated “sandbox” simulation where they can use blocks to build entire worlds.  Here's the final trailer: In a far-ranging interview, Stopsack and Estey shared with AWN a peek into their creative process, from early design exploration to creation of an intricate practical cloak for Malgosha and the use of Unreal Engine for previs, postvis, and real-time onset visualization. Dan Sarto: The film is filled with distinct settings and characters sporting various “block” styled features. Can you share some of the work you did on the environments, character design, and character animation? Sheldon Stopsack: There's, there's so much to talk about and truth to be told, if you were to touch on everything, we would probably need to spend the whole day together.  Kevin Estey: Sheldon and I realized that when we talk about the film, either amongst ourselves or with someone else, we could just keep going, there are so many stories to tell. DS: Well, start with The Overworld and The Nether. How did the design process begin? What did you have to work with? SS: Visual effects is a tricky business, you know. It's always difficult. Always challenging. However, Minecraft stood out to us as not your usual quote unquote standard visual effects project, even though as you know, there is no standard visual effects project because they're all somehow different. They all come with their own creative ideas, inspirations, and challenges. But Minecraft, right from the get-go, was different, simply by the fact that when you first consider the idea of making such a live-action movie, you instantly ask yourself, “How do we make this work? How do we combine these two inherently very, very different but unique worlds?” That was everyone’s number one question. How do we land this? Where do we land this? And I don't think that any of us really had an answer, including our clients, Dan Lemmon [Production VFX Supervisor] and Jared Hess [the film’s director]. Everyone was really open for this journey. That's compelling for us, to get out of our comfort zone. It makes you nervous because there are no real obvious answers. KE: Early on, we seemed to thrive off these kinds of scary creative challenges. There were lots of question marks. We had many moments when we were trying to figure out character designs. We had a template from the game, but it was an incredibly vague, low-resolution template. And there were so many ways that we could go. But that design discovery throughout the project was really satisfying.  DS: Game adaptations are never simple. There usually isn’t much in the way of story. But with Minecraft, from a visual standpoint, how did you translate low res, block-styled characters into something entertaining that could sustain a 100-minute feature film? SS: Everything was a question mark. Using the lava that you see in The Nether as one example, we had beautiful concept art for all our environments, The Overworld and The Nether, but those concepts only really took you this far. They didn’t represent the block shapes or give you a clear answer of like how realistic some of those materials, shapes and structures would be. How organic would we go? All of this needed to be explored. For the lava, we had stylized concept pieces, with block shaped viscosity as it flowed down. But we spent months with our effects team, and Dan and Jared, just riffing on ideas. We came full circle, with the lava ending up being more realistic, a naturally viscous liquid based on real physics. And the same goes with the waterfall that you see in the Overworld.  The question is, how far do we take things into the true Minecraft representation of things? How much do we scale back a little bit and ground ourselves in reality, with effects we’re quite comfortable producing as a company? There's always a tradeoff to find that balance of how best to combine what’s been filmed, the practical sets and live-action performances, with effects. Where’s the sweet spot? What's the level of abstraction? What's honest to the game? As much as some call Minecraft a simple game, it isn't simple, right? It's incredibly complex. It's got a set of rules and logic to the world building process within the game that we had to learn, adapt, and honor in many ways. When our misfits first arrive and we have these big vistas and establishing shots, when you really look at it, you, you recognize a lot of the things that we tried to adapt from the game. There are different biomes, like the Badlands, which is very sand stoney; there's the Woodlands, which is a lush environment with cherry blossom trees; you’ve got the snow biome with big mountains in the background. Our intent was to honor the game. KE: I took a big cue from a lot of the early designs, and particularly the approach that Jared liked for the characters and to the design in general, which was maintaining the stylized, blocky aesthetic, but covering them in realistic flesh, fur, things that were going to make them appear as real as possible despite the absolutely unreal designs of their bodies. And so essentially, it was squared skeleton… squarish bones with flesh and realistic fur laid over top. We tried various things, all extremely stylized. The Creepers are a good example. We tried all kinds of ways for them to explode. Sheldon found a great reference for a cat coughing up a hairball. He was nice to censor the worst part of it, but those undulations in the chest and ribcage… Jared spoke of the Creepers being basically tragic characters that only wanted to be loved, to just be close to you. But sadly, whenever they did, they’d explode. So, we experimented with a lot of different motions of how they’d explode. DS: Talk about the process of determining how these characters would move. None seem to have remotely realistic proportions in their limbs, bodies, or head size. KE: There were a couple things that Jared always seemed to be chasing. One was just something that would make him laugh. Of course, it had to sit within the bounds of how a zombie might move, or a skeleton might move, as we were interpreting the game. But the main thing was just, was it fun and funny? I still remember one of the earliest gags they came up with in mocap sessions, even before I even joined the show, was how the zombies get up after they fall over. It was sort of like a tripod, where its face and feet were planted and its butt shoots up in the air. After a lot of experimentation, we came up with basic personality types for each character. There were 12 different types of Piglins. The zombies were essentially like you're coming home from the pub after a few too many pints and you're just trying to get in the door, but you can't find your keys. Loose, slightly inebriated movement. The best movement we found for the skeletons was essentially like an old man with rigid limbs and lack of ligaments that was chasing kids off his lawn. And so, we created this kind of bible of performance types that really helped guide performers on the mocap stage and animators later on. SS: A lot of our exploration didn’t stick. But Jared was the expert in all of this. He always came up with some quirky last-minute idea.  KE: My favorite from Jared came in the middle of one mocap shoot. He walked up to me and said he had this stupid idea. I said OK, go on. He said, what if Malgosha had these two little pigs next to her, like Catholic alter boys [the thurifers], swinging incense [a thurible]. Can we do that? I talked to our stage manager, and we quickly put together a temporary prop for the incense burners. And we got two performers who just stood there. What are they going to do? Jared said, “Nothing. Just stand there and swing. I think it would look funny.” So, that’s what we did.  We dubbed them the Priesty Boys. And they are there throughout the film. That was amazing about Jared. He was always like, let's just try it, see if it works. Otherwise ditch it. DS: Tell me about your work on Malgosha. And I also want to discuss your use of Unreal Engine and the previs and postvis work.  SS: For Malgosha as a character, our art department did a phenomenal job finding the character design at the concept phase. But it was a collective effort. So many contributors were involved in her making. And I'm not just talking about the digital artists here on our side. It was a joint venture of different people having different explorations and experiments. It started off with the concept work as a foundation, which we mocked up with 3D sketches before building a model. But with Malgosha, we also had the costume department on the production side building this elaborate cloak. Remember, that cloak kind of makes 80, 85% of her appearance. It's almost like a character in itself, the way we utilized it. And the costume department built this beautiful, elaborate, incredibly intricate, practical version of it that we intended to use on set for the performer to wear. It ended up being too impractical because it was too heavy. But it was beautiful. So, while we didn't really use it on set, it gave us something physically to kind of incorporate into our digital version. KE: Alan Henry is the motion performer who portrayed her on set and on the mocap stage. I've known him for close to 15 years. I started working with him on The Hobbit films. He was a stunt performer who eventually rolled into doing motion capture with us on The Hobbit. He’s an incredible actor and absolutely hilarious and can adapt to any sort of situation. He’s so improvisational. He came up with an approach to Malgosha very quickly. Added a limp so that she felt decrepit, leaning on the staff, adding her other arm as kind of like a gimp arm that she would point and gesture with.   Even though she’s a blocky character, her anatomy is very much a biped, with rounder limbs than the other Piglins. She's got hooves, is somewhat squarish, and her much more bulky mass in the middle was easier to manipulate and move around. Because she would have to battle with Steve in the end, she had to have a level of agility that even some of the Piglins didn't have. DS: Did Unreal Engine come into play with her?  SS: Unreal was used all the way through the project. Dan Lemmon and his team early on set up their own virtual art department to build representations of the Overworld and the Nether within the context of Unreal. We and Sony Imageworks tried to provide recreations of these environments that were then used within Unreal to previsualize what was happening on set during shooting of principal photography. And that's where our mocap and on-set teams were coming into play. Effects provided what we called the Nudge Cam. It was a system to do real-time tracking using a stereo pair of Basler computer vision cameras that were mounted onto the sides of the principal camera. We provided the live tracking that was then composited in real time with the Unreal Engine content that all the vendors had provided. It was a great way of utilizing Unreal to give the camera operators or DOP, even Jared, a good sense of what we would actually shoot. It gave everyone a little bit of context for the look and feel of what you could actually expect from these scenes.  Because we started this journey with Unreal having onset in mind, we internally decided, look, let's take this further. Let's take this into post-production as well. What would it take to utilize Unreal for shot creation? And it was really exclusively used on the Nether environment. I don’t want to say we used it for matte painting replacement. We used it more for say, let's build this extended environment in Unreal. Not only use it as a render engine with this reasonably fast turnaround but also use it for what it's good at: authoring things, quickly changing things, moving columns around, manipulating things, dressing them, lighting them, and rendering them. It became sort of a tool that we used in place of a traditional matte painting for the extended environments. KE: Another thing worth mentioning is we were able to utilize it on our mocap stage as well during the two-week shoot with Jared and crew. When we shoot on the mocap stage, we get a very simple sort of gray shaded diagnostic grid. You have your single-color characters that sometimes are textured, but they’re fairly simple without any context of environment. Our special projects team was able to port what we usually see in Giant, the software we use on the mocap stage, into Unreal, which gave us these beautifully lit environments with interactive fire and atmosphere. And Jared and the team could see their movie for the first time in a rough, but still very beautiful rough state. That was invaluable. DS: If you had to key on anything, what would say with the biggest challenges for your teams on the film? You're laughing. I can hear you thinking, “Do we have an hour?”  KE: Where do you begin?  SS: Exactly. It's so hard to really single one out. And I struggle with that question every time I've been asked that question. KE: I’ll start.  I've got a very simple practical answer and then a larger one, something that was new to us, kind of similar to what we were just talking about. The simple practical one is the Piglins square feet with no ankles. It was very tough to make them walk realistically. Think of the leg of a chair. How do you make that roll and bank and bend because there is no joint? There are a lot of Piglins walking on surfaces and it was a very difficult conundrum to solve. It took a lot of hard work from our motion edit team and our animation team to get those things walking realistically. You know, it’s doing that simple thing that you don't usually pay attention to. So that was one reasonably big challenge that is often literally buried in the shadows. The bigger one was something that was new to me. We often do a lot of our previs and postvis in-house and then finish the shots. And just because of circumstances and capacity, we did the postvis for the entire final battle, but we ended up sharing the sequence with Digital Domain, who did an amazing job completing some of the stuff on the Battlefield we did post on. For me personally, I've never experienced not finishing what I started. But it was also really rewarding to see how well the work we had put in was honored by DD when they took it over.   SS: I think the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement that I'm most proud of is really ending up with something that was well received by the wider audience. Of creating these two worlds, this sort of abstract adaptation of the Minecraft game and combining it with live-action. That was the achievement for me. That was the biggest challenge. We were all nervous from day one. And we continued to be nervous up until the day the movie came out. None of us really knew how it ultimately would be received. The fact that it came together and was so well received is a testament to everyone doing a fantastic job. And that's what I'm incredibly proud of. Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
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  • Billy Joel Offloads a Piece of His Waterfront Long Island Compound for $7 Million

    A home on Billy Joel’s longtime Long Island estate just changed hands for million, the New York Post reports. The news of the sale comes days after the Grammy-winning musician canceled all of his scheduled concert dates to undergo physical therapy for normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder that affects hearing, vision, and balance.Spanning five acres, the parcel was part of Joel’s 26-acre Centre Island compound, dubbed Middlesea, which he began assembling in 2002. The recently sold beachfront dwelling is referred to as Middlesea’s gatehouse—though it is much more impressive than that humble name connotes. The 5,565-square-foot structure comprises a historic gatehouse and a carriage house that were combined to form the five-bedroom, four-bathroom residence that stands there today. Two kitchens, two primary suites, and a heated gunite swimming pool are among the home’s impressive amenities. A spacious pergola-shaded outdoor dining area looks out at the water, as does a screened-in patio equipped with a built-in barbecue area.Billy Joel’s Houses: Inside the Musician’s Impressive Real Estate PortfolioThe “New York State of Mind” singer recently purchased a sprawling Hamptons estateThe “Piano Man” listed his entire Middlesea estate in 2023 with a million price tag. According to the Post, the remainder of the compound will drop in price to million following the sale of the gatehouse. The property’s recently renovated main house is a 20,000-square-foot manse complete with a bowling alley, an indoor pool, a wine cellar, a spa, and a salon area. An additional guesthouse, a helipad, a floating dock, and acres of surrounding land round out the impressive compound, which boasts 2,000 feet of Oyster Bay Harbor water frontage. The property is not far from where the singer grew up in the nearby Oyster Bay hamlet of Hicksville.Join NowAD PRO members enjoy exclusive benefits. Get a year of unlimited access for per month.ArrowThe musician, who “hopes to be able to resume performing as his recovery progresses,” as a source told People, also owns properties in East Hampton and South Florida.
    #billy #joel #offloads #piece #his
    Billy Joel Offloads a Piece of His Waterfront Long Island Compound for $7 Million
    A home on Billy Joel’s longtime Long Island estate just changed hands for million, the New York Post reports. The news of the sale comes days after the Grammy-winning musician canceled all of his scheduled concert dates to undergo physical therapy for normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder that affects hearing, vision, and balance.Spanning five acres, the parcel was part of Joel’s 26-acre Centre Island compound, dubbed Middlesea, which he began assembling in 2002. The recently sold beachfront dwelling is referred to as Middlesea’s gatehouse—though it is much more impressive than that humble name connotes. The 5,565-square-foot structure comprises a historic gatehouse and a carriage house that were combined to form the five-bedroom, four-bathroom residence that stands there today. Two kitchens, two primary suites, and a heated gunite swimming pool are among the home’s impressive amenities. A spacious pergola-shaded outdoor dining area looks out at the water, as does a screened-in patio equipped with a built-in barbecue area.Billy Joel’s Houses: Inside the Musician’s Impressive Real Estate PortfolioThe “New York State of Mind” singer recently purchased a sprawling Hamptons estateThe “Piano Man” listed his entire Middlesea estate in 2023 with a million price tag. According to the Post, the remainder of the compound will drop in price to million following the sale of the gatehouse. The property’s recently renovated main house is a 20,000-square-foot manse complete with a bowling alley, an indoor pool, a wine cellar, a spa, and a salon area. An additional guesthouse, a helipad, a floating dock, and acres of surrounding land round out the impressive compound, which boasts 2,000 feet of Oyster Bay Harbor water frontage. The property is not far from where the singer grew up in the nearby Oyster Bay hamlet of Hicksville.Join NowAD PRO members enjoy exclusive benefits. Get a year of unlimited access for per month.ArrowThe musician, who “hopes to be able to resume performing as his recovery progresses,” as a source told People, also owns properties in East Hampton and South Florida. #billy #joel #offloads #piece #his
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    Billy Joel Offloads a Piece of His Waterfront Long Island Compound for $7 Million
    A home on Billy Joel’s longtime Long Island estate just changed hands for $7 million, the New York Post reports. The news of the sale comes days after the Grammy-winning musician canceled all of his scheduled concert dates to undergo physical therapy for normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder that affects hearing, vision, and balance.Spanning five acres, the parcel was part of Joel’s 26-acre Centre Island compound, dubbed Middlesea, which he began assembling in 2002. The recently sold beachfront dwelling is referred to as Middlesea’s gatehouse—though it is much more impressive than that humble name connotes. The 5,565-square-foot structure comprises a historic gatehouse and a carriage house that were combined to form the five-bedroom, four-bathroom residence that stands there today. Two kitchens, two primary suites, and a heated gunite swimming pool are among the home’s impressive amenities. A spacious pergola-shaded outdoor dining area looks out at the water, as does a screened-in patio equipped with a built-in barbecue area.Billy Joel’s Houses: Inside the Musician’s Impressive Real Estate PortfolioThe “New York State of Mind” singer recently purchased a sprawling Hamptons estateThe “Piano Man” listed his entire Middlesea estate in 2023 with a $49 million price tag. According to the Post, the remainder of the compound will drop in price to $39.9 million following the sale of the gatehouse. The property’s recently renovated main house is a 20,000-square-foot manse complete with a bowling alley, an indoor pool, a wine cellar, a spa, and a salon area. An additional guesthouse, a helipad, a floating dock, and acres of surrounding land round out the impressive compound, which boasts 2,000 feet of Oyster Bay Harbor water frontage. The property is not far from where the singer grew up in the nearby Oyster Bay hamlet of Hicksville.Join NowAD PRO members enjoy exclusive benefits. Get a year of unlimited access for $25 $20 per month.ArrowThe musician, who “hopes to be able to resume performing as his recovery progresses,” as a source told People, also owns properties in East Hampton and South Florida.
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