Open Blocks VR to Silo

Blocks was really clever and powerful 3d content creation tool in VR made by Google some years ago, but then was abandoned along with tools like Tilt Brush...yet they kept the bones of these tools Open Source for others to tinker with, and so, Open Blocks was born a few months ago. This rekindled my interest in content creation in VR, though I did end of modifying the scene somewhat through Silo 3d from Nevercenter. 

Open Blocks_Karl Wants Orange! by Matt Connors on Sketchfab

First update of 2025

It's been way too long since I have posted any of my artwork, and there's not really a good reason, other than life somethimes gets in the way, or priorities of my family and work came in front of updates. But it's definitely not due to being idels, as I have actually found that in the past year I have been fairly prolific with my artwork in a balanced way; tactile drawing and painting, some digital work, VR artworks, and quite a bit of dabbling with AI on my own creations. This video is made using Silo 3d, with Milo for rendering, then further re-render with Vizcom and then some Photoshop compositing. 

Storybook Challenge Sketchfab

I have been kicking around ideas for this concept for a while, but this recent Sketchfab challenge pushed me to evolve the idea further. It also helped to have a few days worth of break from work to sketch out part of the story.

Stuck on You, Chapter One by Matt Connors on Sketchfab

The first draft for the model looked like this:

Schmug4_test_solo by Matt Connors on Sketchfab

The Shipment

I have been continuing with the experimentation with Tiltbrush speedsculpting, using this as the means to jumpstart ideas that I can finish either in 2d or 3d. I leave the symmetry tool on, and then use the matte poly brush for the big shapes, than add more detail, timeboxed at about 15 to 20 minutes. 

The export process direct to Photoshop as a 3d object was not working too well for me, mainly because this gave me less control over the lighting of the object as I imagined the airship fitting into my scene. Modo was an easy input and ouput to just modify the lighting quickly, and then make a render along with a mask that Photoshop could use to isolate the ship. 

Photoshop does a great job for image filters, layer management, and masking, but personally, I find the painting tools through the brushes to be tool slow from moving my Wacom pen to seeing the resultant stroke, whereas SketchbookPro is much faster on the uptake, and has more 'painterly' brush kits.

In this case, I placed the SketchbookPro .tif file as a linked Smart Object within Photoshop, so that when I made changes to the greyscale SketchbookPro image, it updated automatically in my Photoshop file underneath the color adjustments and sepia filter. 

Autoliv Event Concept Art 1

The recent Tiltbrush work below has remined me that I have quite a few projects that were locked due to pending client approvals, but I can now open them up again. This project was an ambitious plan to have integrated AR appllications and interactive displays for a whole series of events in Europe, Asia and the Americas. The concepts needed to be put together very quickly, within a few business days, and working in Silo, Modo and Sketchfab, with a little Photoshop for texturing, allowed a great deal of creative freedom.

AUTOLIV Event Cybercom Concept 1: Trans LED by Matt Connors on Sketchfab