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Nick Fox-Gieg

@n1ckfg.bsky.social

2K followers 480 following 380 posts

Experimental animator in Toronto. SIGGRAPH 2024, SXSW 2010. https://fox-gieg.com

fox-gieg.com

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · Sep 4

Defended my PhD this April, and now the dissertation's published--a pipeline for integrating volumetric video and hand-drawn 3D animation, PyTorch and ONNX ML tools for Blender and Unity. Video highlights and link to PDF:
vimeo.com/1083818611

Lightning Artist Toolkit Overview (2025)

Video documentation of my dissertation defense, 10 April 2025.

vimeo.com

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 2h

Ha, I always took it literally, like here's the story of a schmuck who gets mutated by Dr. Harry's broadcast signal...it does make perfect sense as a prescient warning about the consequences of media illiteracy. And maybe too optimistic that the stochastic heavy weaponry would belong to the New Wave

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 14h

Further evidence for this, Harlan Ellison, who I'd call an at least semi-Orwellian writer, actually did two books of incisive TV recaps.

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 17h

I just meant I sometimes see posts here claiming that post-212 all work has stopped, and that I'm very glad they're wrong! (Sending this having just stepped off the northbound University lane)

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 1d

I'd been seeing occasional posts claiming that no new protected bike lanes were going up in TO this year--very glad to hear that's not the case

kanchan m @kayehm.bsky.social · 1d

Y'all knew about most of these last week, but here are some more recent photos from the Chief Planner.

Add'l info:
Harbord is done from Queens Park to Grace. To Ossington should be done by early November with bike 🚦
Queens Quay - new bike🚦is also imminent
Esplanade - so much much more coming

Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 1d

Toronto’s Cycling and Pedestrian Projects Team continues to hit it out of the park. Out for a ride today and here’s just some of the new cycling facilities that I came across. New concrete planters and permanent curbs on Harbord Street. /1

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 1d

Or West Virginia names in Quebec

Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Andrew Orton @andreworton.bsky.social · 2d

The multi-camera drama has disappeared forever: an entire medium, an entire *form of art*, has just gone. Thirty years ago. Unheralded, unnoticed. It’s like the novel disappearing. Or watercolours vanishing. It was cultural vandalism, by oversight. 19/

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 2d

imo it's all the amazing "peak creative coding" Processing and openFrameworks pieces that JT Nimoy's team ported to Houdini. Ended up beautifully documenting an ephemeral art microgenre

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah what I was thinking, the sketch aired 1969 (speaking of which, looks like that's its own nice research project; dirty joke archaeology has tremendous nerd-sniping potential)

Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Caræsten 🇵🇸 @cara.city · 3d

went up to the fruit flies in my house and told them "hey BUDDY they can simulate you in a GPU now you better WATCH OUT"

Nosferatu RBMK 🦇 @comraderobot.bsky.social · 3d

alright special interest of the day: complete. with significant caveats seems that faster-than-realtime whole-brain emulation of a fruit fly is possible with a modern graphics card lol

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Seamus Blackley @seamus.bsky.social · 3d

If I had laser hair, I sure wouldn’t want it removed. I’d be so psyched.

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 3d

Counterpoint, don't "flopsy" and "flopsies" kinda roll off the tongue? "The current geopolitical climate demands a radical reimagining of flopsy regulation" etc

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Dave Pagurek @davepagurek.com · 4d

Come take a look at what the Processing Foundation's fellows and grantees have been up to this year! openassembly.processingfoundation.org

Open Assembly 2025 | 12 Projects, 1 Assembly

Join Open Assembly 2025 - A 2.5-hour virtual festival celebrating Processing Foundation's 2025 fellows and grantees. Explore 12 creative coding projects spanning accessibility, performance, and intera...

openassembly.processingfoundation.org

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

cow tools daily @cowtoolsdaily.bsky.social · 4d

it's not FOR us

edited comic panel. Batman is breaking a lump-with-handle cow tool over his knee and saying "this is the tool of the cow. we do not understand it. we will not use it."

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

max 🌌 @sneptech.bsky.social · 5d

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 5d

this is the ideal type of Post

Saoirse ☀️ @scratchcarddust.bsky.social · 5d

If you know basic kabbalah it's actually not too hard to make a golem out of a labubu. Don't recommend it though. They have a pre-existing body-dharma. As soon as they wake they run straight for the sea. V hard to counter. Lost the first one. No idea what it's doing out there. Moved like lightning.

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Meredith Whittaker @meredithmeredith.bsky.social · 5d

We're so relieved to see Germany reaffirm its opposition to the dangerous Chat Control proposal--the one that would mandate mass scanning of communications. Germany's long been a solid champion of privacy, and the news that it was considering backing mass surveillance was alarming. 1/

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

If you're trying to enroll in the extra year of security patches for Windows 10 before the deadline, you've upgraded to the newest (and I guess last?) version as instructed, but still don't see the option in Windows Update--of course that needs a registry fix. www.askwoody.com/forums/topic...

www.askwoody.com

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Exactly! I get that live-action folks really don't wanna become animators, but imo the answer is to fully automate the generation of a scene graph from a single-camera video (computing the camera pose, depth, normals, etc without requiring any user interaction)...instead of spinning a roulette wheel

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Caveat that's not by any means production ready, but imo the workflow of conventionally animating a 3D scene and using text prompts to describe its visual qualities to the renderer--not the action!--is the best solution.

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

That's the key I think; the value of diffusion rendering is as a new kind of render engine driven at a low level by a 3D scene graph (not stock photo collages stored at a specific address in an archive represented by a text prompt and a seed)...Blender Dream Textures is a great existing prototype

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Solid argument at least that the "get in loser we're doing soul transfer, details TBD" Singularity has its origins in 19th-century Federovism aka Cosmism, and there's a direct line from Russian aerospace engineers getting into it, to American aerospace engineers getting into it, to Esalen, to SV

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Reposted by Nick Fox-Gieg

Deacon Blues Clues @deaconbluesclues.bsky.social · 6d

bringing the "making a copy of a person isnt immortality, they have their own existence and are a totally separate being" to the baby shower and ruining the vibes

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Also also, the wild unpredictability comes from a random seed and you can just turn that off, it's an unfortunate UI choice to make that the default on the sampler. Especially if you make a patch that uses like three samplers and then it's total chaos.

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Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Also for HD/4K final output I'm finding tiled rendering with a small fast model much more gratifying than 720p + upscale with a slow big model

Nick Fox-Gieg @n1ckfg.bsky.social · 6d

Fwiw I'm having the exact opposite experience--after working mostly with metered cloud tools, unlimited iteration on local hardware is a hell of a drug. I'm using image maps for all input and control, and text prompts only for effects