prototyping/gen ai
Editable Threejs World with Blender Interiors
live (might have some bugs) at:
https://chrisrogers3d.graphics/utariga/
This is my take on procedural cities with Claude and Threejs. I wanted an editable city live in game that could also work with Blender to make more detailed assets that are low poly. In this demo I can export the very low poly created by this threejs app into Blender and have Claude add details and render it using Octane (or Cycles) and bring the new scene back and also view the Octane render from that spot (figure 1).
You can edit the streets as nurbs curves in the editor and the terrain will follow, like I would normally use Houdini. Im editing the lighting myself in Blender for the Octane renders and exploring ways to bring that back to Threejs.
2026
latest checkin at:
https://github.com/chrisrogers3d/utariga
computer vision
SAM3 3D Blender+Comfy
I used Claude Opus to write this Blender addon that calls ComfyUI (with a SAM3 workflow to segment images with text prompts such as eyes, wings, head, clothing, feet, legs, hips, hair) and finds the polygons that match, and makes a 3d bounding box and center locator for auto-rigging unstructed character meshes. Video is not realtime, these are cached results and I sped up video. Takes about 1 minute, could be optimized a lot. 2026
pipeline / tech art
Garment Customization Pipeline for RSTLSS
I architected and implemented a pipeline to allow us to create garments using Marvelous Designer, Houdini, Maya and Blender, then
to let end users on the web to customize their garments and then mint them as NFTs.
This
video shows the dev version of the garment editor written in ThreeJs, making a random garment, then getting the 2 other GLBs (NFT version and avatar/rigged version) delivered to this threejs scene, you can see all the headless Blender output info for debugging.
mixed reality / prototyping
Fire Hands
Hands on fire mixed reality demo on Quest3 with Unity. Ive explored making it look a lot better trying to use threejs and webxr, will update this. 2025
firehands for Meta Quest 3 APK
tech art / prototyping
3 3D Time of flight cameras at once
Multi 3D camera fusion in Unity. When experimenting with a volumetric video solution, I set up 3 Kinects and rendered them using Unity's VFX graph. Circa 2020.
tech art / prototyping
Selection shader with no alpha blending for VR
This experiment in Unity was to explore highlighting/selecting an object without using any alpha blending on Meta Quest for Horizon circa 2020. I create 100+ quads with a script and use a vertex shader to shape (into a sphere mostly), color and animate them.
prototyping
MIDI Instrument and Quest Hand Tracking
This experiment used Quest's handtracking to interface with a physical MIDI instrument.
When the user presses buttons on the device, it is localized in the VR world. Triggering a control displays the value of the control in VR.
The scene is a robot jazz club. Made in Unity 2020.
tech art / tools
Mojo Character
Made with Unity in 2022, this created 10,000 unique Mojos by assembling parts and applying materials and textures, then rendering them with Unitys HDRP for an NFT project. I made the shaders with shadergraph and did all of the tools and rendering working with the lead designer, lead artist, lead animator and some outsourced artists.
tech art / tools
VR Environment for TV show
Made with Unity in 2022, this environment was modeled after a TV show for an immersive experience on Quest2. I worked with an artist that did the props, I did the layout, lighting, materials, environment textures, procedural modeling of some architecture in Houdini, shaders, and optimized and debugged the final executable.
prototyping / tech art
AR Floor is Made of Lava
AR experiment on Android. Made with Unity in 2017, this used Googles AR Core on Android to make a floor is made of lava demo.
The lava and floor destruction VFX
were made with Houdini.
prototyping
Draw with Anki's Vector
This hackathon project used the Vector Python SDK to have it see my first line and based on a subject finish the drawing with
Sketch-RNN. In the video I am using Vectors Python SDK to drive. It recognizes the markers on the paper through its camera, and that gets visualized in Maya in 3D. Also on screen are Vectors camera feed that is projected into Maya, and Vectors map of the world with the found markers in it.
2018
prototyping
Dance with Anki's Vector
Experiment for Vector to follow my lead in waving your hands in the air. This hackathon project used PoseNet and the Vector Python SDK to have Vector dance with me and sing Outkast Lyrics 2018
tech art / rigging
Rigging Shaders and Materials
I rigged characters, wrote pipeline and VFX tools, wrote shaders and did most of the character setup and animation processing while supporting several external artists, animators and designers. 2017
prototyping / tech art
Physics Sims
Procedural Physics in Maya. PyMEL script creates tracked vehicles using Bullet physics in Maya. 2014.
prototyping
OpenCV Marker Tracking
ARUCO Markers as an input device. This was made with Unity and OpenCV. An ARUCO marker is attached to the physical figure and the digital figure responds. 2017.
prototyping
Vuforia Marker Tracking
Using the phone as an input device before I had a Vive, 2016. There is a marker on the table and the phone is moved which sends that info back to the PC and its location is visualized.
