Blackbox Life Recorder Album Art Template

I wasn't originally planning on doing this, but I really like the album art for Blackbox Life Recorder and the more I looked at it the more I wanted to see if I could recreate it like I did with the Collapse artwork. I came up with something that I thought was half decent and I would be remiss if I did not share it with fellow fans in case at least one person might want to use it.

Just like the Collapse template, I've made it so that you can upload any image that you want and it will automatically adhere to the 3d cube (just make sure the image is a square, otherwise it will be stretched). This template unfortunately uses the more resource-intensive rendering engine in order to mimic the lighting and shadows more closely, so your computer will chug along a bit as it renders. It shouldn't take any more than a few minutes unless you have a really old computer. If you have a laptop, the fans will most likely kick on quite loudly. The file is in the .zip attached and you can download Blender for free to use it.

I've included a screenshot with instructions in the file. It's not completely foolproof for people who have never used Blender for modeling and rendering, but I've tried my best to make it as easy as possible for anyone to try it out. If you want to live preview the image before rendering, hold the Z button and slide up to Rendered in the viewport section with the cube in it. To switch back, hold the Z button and slide to the right to Solid. If you keep it on the Rendered screen for too long it will eat up resources, so I would do that only to see briefly what it looks like and then switch back to the Solid view.

I've attached some test renders, one with a similar texture to the album art as well as others with different tones and colors just to see how they would look:

aphex_blackbox_template.zip 14.86 MB · 36 downloads

you're the bestest, thanks a bunch for this!

would u mind posting the collapse one again? pretty pls? thanks!

  On 6/27/2023 at 4:14 PM, cruising for burgers said:

you're the bestest, thanks a bunch for this!

would u mind posting the collapse one again? pretty pls? thanks!

Absolutely, you can get those files from this thread. Or just go to the Google Drive folder with the files here.

Deadly, no idea how you've done that but the results look great

Now collapse the cube

Wow this is really cool and a perfect excuse for me to finally try out blender... and perhaps update my profile pic

Appreciate it.

thank you yo

This is really fab - I was daydreaming yesterday about how the cube thing resembles the collapse thing - visually anyway  - and here you are directly showing it. Excellent

Interestingly i can;t see the sonic connection.. i mean Collapse track did collapse in the centre.. but Blackbox track... is it even.. "boxy"?

  On 6/29/2023 at 9:25 AM, phudoshin said:

Interestingly i can;t see the sonic connection.. i mean Collapse track did collapse in the centre.. but Blackbox track... is it even.. "boxy"?

well it's a cube, and a small cube in the center? boxes? they're not black though...

edit: oh the tiny box in the center is black...

@pacmanyo is it possible to do this the other way around? like put the new cover in blender and get the original image? it's a synth or a drum machine right? ekt's should recognize it...

@cruising for burgers I could be misunderstanding you - technically yes, you could get the original art. But you would need the original image, which I assume is a high res shot of Richard's gear that Weirdcore was able to obtain, and you would also need the correct texture coordinates in the geometry, which could be done if one studied the animated version and paid attention to how the textures move. So even if we had the original image, it would not replicate it exactly, I'd need to create another more accurate version and what I've done here is just a quick and dirty reconstruction.

And I found that tiny box an interesting design decision. At first I thought it was to cover up where all of the edges meet perhaps because it looked unsavory without it, but I think it's there to give the artist more to mess around with. I purposefully made the tiny cube in mine to be darker than the rest of the image so it would work more universally with any texture people want while making the Aphex symbol stand out better, my own stylistic choice in this case.

 Gave it a whirl: (black) forrest recorder

  On 6/29/2023 at 7:30 PM, cruising for burgers said:

@pacmanyo is it possible to do this the other way around? like put the new cover in blender and get the original image? it's a synth or a drum machine right? ekt's should recognize it...

Think it's various Buchla modules, it's got the distinctive 'blue labels on white background' look to it:

Happy with my rubics cube render!

  On 6/30/2023 at 3:22 PM, pacman said:

I could be misunderstanding you - technically yes, you could get the original art. But you would need the original image, which I assume is a high res shot of Richard's gear that Weirdcore was able to obtain, and you would also need the correct texture coordinates in the geometry, which could be done if one studied the animated version and paid attention to how the textures move. So even if we had the original image, it would not replicate it exactly, I'd need to create another more accurate version and what I've done here is just a quick and dirty reconstruction.

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oh in all my innocence I thought you just needed to revert the process... didn't u use the original synth image to generate the cube?

Lil instagram i made

@phudoshinThat's really cool, I'm glad to see it working well for you! Great looking renders!

@cruising for burgersTo be honest I know nothing about modular synths and drum machines (I just love the way they sound) so when I was attempting to replicate the original artwork, I found a generic synth image somewhere online that was a decent resolution which worked well to get the lighting right. I could probably re-engineer things with the images you and mcbpete provided (and thank you for doing so) but I'm not sure I have the time. If I do, I'll post it here.

Also I forgot to mention that images should be set on a square canvas to work without stretching. If you take the higher res Buchla pic and stack it until it's a 1:1 resolution, you might be able to get something closer to the original artwork.

bump

this should be pinned