TOBY LIAD

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About Toby

Toby Liad started life after having observed plenty of daily art projects online and having done a few shortlived ones. Problem was that just drawing, painting, modeling, rendering or creating textures wasn’t enough. Toby allows for flexing both art and coding muscles at the same time.

Daily renders by the likes of @beeple are fascinating in how they are simultaneously incredible art but also meaningless instant-gratification eye candy. I’m curious to see how far both sides of this double-edged sword can be pushed by applying some @archillect-style automation of curation.

Future

I’m often thinking about new stuff for Toby. Some ideas are easy and can be put into practice right away, others might require re-engineering the pipeline so I’m trying to be a bit careful about how much extra work I cause myself.

Some examples of ideas I’m toying with:
- Simulations. Still frame renders of the result of some fracture/softbody/growth thing or similar.
- Post FX on the renders. Bloom, glare & aberrate ALL THE THINGS!
- Using assets much more. Either modeling a bunch of stuff and throwing it in or incorporating pre-made models from Turbosquid or maybe some of you might be interested in sending models to use in the scenes.
- Videos/GIFs. Not near future, rendering animations is too much effort for now.
- Twitch stream was briefly tested already, fun idea but non-essential so it will have to wait.
- Popularity feedback loop on social media. Trying to algorithmically figure out which renders people like most and why and create more of that.

If you have a scene idea for Toby, feel free to holla @tobyliad on Twitter: “Hey @tobyliad, I think you should have >>>more dolphins<<< in your renders!” and so on. DMs are now open too if you don’t want to be public about it.

FAQ

Q: Where are the newest renders?
A: Everything gets posted on Twitter first.

Q: Where else can I find TOBY besides Twitter and tobyliad.com?
A: There is also an Instagram account, but there’s nothing substantial there yet. I’d be happy if I can get automatic render uploads working there without getting banned.

Q: What brushes do you use?
A: Mostly Houdini and Python.

Q: Do you make all models yourself?
A: No, I use stock & other assets as well. See bottom of this page for details.

Q: Thought about prints/merch?
A: Sure, those could be offered later. Right now everything is being rendered at 720x720, which isn’t very print friendly, but a copy of the scenes is being saved so that they could be dug up for higher-resolution re-renders.

Q: I would like to tell you something. How?
A: Just @ me on Twitter.

Q: I would like to privately tell you something. How?
A: Twitter DMs (open) or tobyliad@gmail.com.

Q: How do I stay updated on the development of TOBY?
A: Go to Twitter and search for: “-#hourlyrender from:tobyliad” (<– or just click that) and select the Latest tab (see image below).
NOTE: This is probably not working for anyone but me yet! Twitter filters search visibility for spam-like accounts like this one. I’m confident it can be solved though, if Archillect appears in searches Toby can too. Stay tuned!

Assets & Licensing

The renders sometimes feature the following models made by other creators who offered them for download under the CC Attribution 4.0 license on Sketchfab: