Practical Effects vs CGI : Enter the Infinity Mirror!
As a big fan of the Mandalorian, I’m consistently inspired by Industrial Light and Magic’s approach to develop cutting edge technology. Recently ILM shared several techniques and tricks to the development of the Mandalorian and the technical advances they made. One topic that has come up multiple times has been the use of practical effects vs CGI and the benefits of each. By using a combination of the two, ILM has once again achieved something unique and amazing and raised the bar of the craft.
This has inspired me to develop a few practical effects I have yet to see used in Sci-fi model scenes and dioramas. To be fair, all of these effects exist in some capacity on their own, but I believe by combining some of the existing techniques in new ways with other techniques that new novel effects can be achieved. Separately, the benefit of using practical effects vs CG, is that you end up with a physical scene of some sort that can look great on a book shelf or as an art piece.
Without further ado, here is a practical effect for making a diorama of a ship scene with depth through the use of an infinity mirror. If you use this technique in your own dioramas I’d love to see the result!
The basics of a constructing an infinity mirror are described in detail elsewhere but here are a few key learnings and key points specific to using an infinity mirror in a scene with practical effects.
1 — The mirror should be thin, if you’re using it for reflection against the mirror layer, you can reduce visible gaps by using a thin mirror.
2 — LED’s, the brighter the better
3 — Your mistakes will repeat for infinitum — make as few as possible!
4 — Consider the reflection and repetition of space
5 — Consider the angle placement and how it will reflect objects in front of it
6 — Consider how to take photos since this can be a challenge with reflection
7 — Real-time control of the LED’s can make it really interesting
8 — Use gloves and be careful to not add defects into the surfaces
In the “Entrance Like a Rockstar” diorama, I employed the infinity mirror technique to the back of the diorama to create a ship-like view with depth. While there are a few improvements I would make to the scene I was overall happy with the final result. For reference the entire diorama is less than 8" in depth.
To make the ship-like detail, I started with a simple design below, which is two separate 3d printed parts. I made the seam-lines as invisible as possible throughout the area that would be repeated.
The design also includes hollow areas to allow for placement of the LED’s as well as screen covers to diffuse the lighting. I tested the first print with the majority of LED’s to see how the effect was coming out.
It’s starting to look like a sci-fi scene. I then lit the second layer and combined them together to achieve this repetitive effect.
With darker light, the scene background looks more like below.
While this is not quite scene-accurate, the 3d print can be modified to adjust for scale, reflection, angle, repetition distance, and include additional detail that will be effortlessly replicated.
I enjoyed building this effect for the diorama above and plan to use this in additional scenes and settings.
To see the full effect and other practical effects in this diorama please see this YouTube link: https://youtu.be/3d3b4sfQXvc
