Musings on Modeling Reality - Finite Vs Infinite Vs The Un-Knowable

Greetings friends, it is so very nice to be able to talk to you all on this platform again - after all, if you were not here, what would be the point in writing this?  In 2023 I returned to modelling after a long hiatus, concentrating on designing miniatures and very small scale ones - the war-gaming scales of 15 and 28 mm, named after the relative heights of humans in those scales - which is very different to the kind of science fiction and real world modelling that many artists engage in.  My early efforts in 3D graphics were all about modelling in a real-world 1:1 scale, for example here is a 'spacecraft:'

Cue Soviet Nation Anthem, on Mars.

It is a representation of a real, full sized thing, which in the real world has an aspect of the infinite that a digital artist must somehow quantify into the finite world of video RAM and as we move closer and closer to its surfaces we can only accomplish this via cheating.  For example, we cannot typically justify spending a month on an ejection seat; individually modelling every stitch and tear in the fabric, the individual fillets of the soldered joints of the circuit board, the grease on the release catches and so on. Time-wise it is unwise and technically we quickly reach the limits of the machine.  Inevitably at some point we must resort to textures, noise (procedural / fractal mathematically generated textures) or maybe some other form of digital witchcraft to sell the idea, hinting at something more and so give our model some sense of reality, but its always a model because to treat the thing as a (for practical purposes) an infinite model that we can look at as close as we like and still believe its real is just not going to happen. 

Actually this buggy is pretty neat, I'm going to print it sometime.

The problem faced by those engaging in this endeavor is ever persistent regardless of our software and hardware, the closer we get to a model the more it falls apart; the pixels of the texture sheet become apparent, the jagged borders of polygons approximating a curve are visible and so on. I know about high-order surfacing but any near perfect representation of a curve is going to look awfully barren and fake if you get close enough to it, perhaps we could use AI to procedurally fill in the gaps if we happen to observe them, but this defies the point of actually modelling something.

A consciousness expanding space-seed, or just a bunch of pixels.

This is why I like to model a 'model' because it *is* finite and unashamedly so - it is just a thing that exists partly in our imagination even when we print it or produce it and hold it in our hands it feels like something more. I feel that the representation is more powerful when it is simply finite and not an inadequate, limited or just a plain AI fake digital representation of the infinite, something which as a pure simulation is ultimately unsatisfying, I consider the vast chaotic CGI space battles we've all been watching for the past 20+ years, never has the action looked more realistic, never has it been so boring and un-satisfying. The 'I have the bestest computers' approach to movie making has only resulted in audiences who are less ultimately impressed with the latest Jurassic Park than they were with the first.  

An experiment to resolve infinite detail in a way which can be physically reproduced and look good at a small scale.

So when considering 'what to model' I am all about a design, to produce something new, not completely off-the wall, not so unusual that you've never seen anything like it but something which tickles the brain just right, something which can be appreciated for what it is, and not for something it can never be - I think this is why people really like miniatures and people like me enjoy modelling them.  I think my future choices of 'what to model' are always now going to be limited by the finite, while enjoying and benefitting from those limitations, whether its extremely small models or larger studio scale, I'd like to see a physical real world model resulting from this work that is limited by the finite, embraces the infinite with features which are deliberately un-knowable, exist only in our imaginations and are all the better for it.

I write this knowing that I may change my mind completely and one day make a fully realized VR model of some vast spacecraft, treating it like an environment as with recreations of the Enterprise D or Titanic. Explore it in detail, but only so much detail is ever possible, eventually you're going to see the pixels or the mathematics behind it whatever you do, but only if you go looking for them.

Maybe the only reason you're here is to look at stuff, and therefore make it real.