What is Procedural Design and How Are We Creating Ultimately Unique NFTs?
Intro
Hi there and welcome back! 👋
Our digital wearables, starting with our Z3NA watches collection, are built using cutting-edge procedural 3D design software Houdini and rendered with Redshift, the world fastest offline rendering engine.
In this article, we will break down the technical elements behind our 3D designs and how we are creating ultimately unique NFTs.
Before diving in, we need to first define some terms to better understand the whole picture.
What is Procedural Design?
A Procedural node system is a system where everything you do is made of nodes that have inputs and outputs. You can control the operations of each node using parameters that are modifiable and accessible anytime.
Each time you change some parameters or inputs, it will create a new solution. Also, parameters can be referenced to one another in a mathematical relationship.
“We’re working with Houdini, a fully procedural software made for hollywood level VFX (explosions, liquids and particle simulations), but it looks like it is the perfect tool to build NFT collections too.” -Stefano Balduzzi, Head of 3D at Brandverse.
Although some of the most basic operations are harder and more time consuming compared to simpler 3D softwares, yet when solving problems using procedural techniques, you get extreme flexibility.
“We can set the parameters to give us different results. This gives us the ability to redo the same operation on new inputs and then automate the process.” -Stefano.
How is This Relevant to Wearables?
When using procedural 3D modelling, we are able to adapt our wearables to the shape of ANY AVATAR! Using our watches as an example, we can move specific control points on our procedural wristband, thus fitting it on whatever wrist seamlessly. The algorithm then recalibrates to update both the geometry and UV map of the materials. This process can then be scaled to cover the entire Avatar collection.
Given the degree of control we have in our design process, we’re able to extract assets in any 3D format, compatible with Unreal or Unity too. This will result in the highest quality 3D NFT capable of adapting to multiple different games, avatars, and environments.
Ultimate Uniqueness: Textures Variation
Now we know that PDG is a procedural architecture designed to distribute tasks and manage dependencies to scale, automate, and analyse content pipelines for Film, TV, Games, Advertising and VR.
How Do We Create ULTIMATELY UNIQUE NFTs?
With an automated switches system powered by PDG we can do the same thing that every NFT project does to build their collections: Switch the visibility of 2D or 3D art layers on and off. However, the flexibility of our PDG system is capable of far more than just this.
“After creating a desired number of unique combinations of geometry and materials for our watch classes, I added textures variation on top of that by changing the position offset (X and Y) and rotation of the texture in UV space.” -Stefano.
To make a visual representation of what Stefano said, we’re going to refer to this example:
Imagine you and I both have a trippy fur BAYC each. Both ‘trippy’ fur traits in our NFTs are the same. The pattern is 100% the same in both ‘trippy’ traits. However, if each one of us own a Relic class Z3NA watch, the texture on your Relic strap will be different than mine. We basically can change the target properties inside the materials themselves.
The Result?
In their finest details, there won’t exist two NFTs that look exactly the same! (Even if they share the same geometry and material).
Closing
Having built our in-house Procedural Dependency Graph (PDG) that can automate and scale efficiently all the tasks required to build large NFT collections and manage thousands of unique variations. We are very confident to share with you some of the highest quality 3D designs to ever step foot in the Metaverse.
Brace yourselves, this will open the door to every inhabitant of the open metaverse to enjoy our 3D wearables!
Hop in our discord to get the latest watch sneak peaks 👀
