As a CGI artist, new and strange techniques are the sort of things always worth examining. One never knows what could result out of some obscure idea, such as UV sculpting (see the lightsabre to the right).

The interesting result of the confluence of two distinct techniques: edge-rendering and UV sculpting.

I happened across this fascinating article regarding “dual meshes”, I simply had to have a go. And it set my mind rolling. Just what else can this sort of thing do?

Having worked with some interesting looking meshes before, I decided to give this technique a quick whirl and then things took their own route, really.

Some vertex moving minutes later, the thought struck me that extruding the faces of my interesting looking mesh would make for a fascinating result. And it did.

The result is some funky-looking glass bricks, that one could incorporate into a nice house, garden wall or secret evil hideout in the depths of the Transylvanian forests. Or similar.

What I particularly like about this technique is that it generate non-repeating complexity with very little work, which is very nice providing, of course, you have the hardware to render it.

A glass brick, modelled using a technique developed by Alessandro Zomparelli.