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3D-printed weighted companion cube dice

Cory Doctorow — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:08:48 +0000

Etsy seller Niquegeek made these 3D printed stainless steel dice that resemble the beloved weighted companion cubes from the game Portal. They're hollow, and retail for $29.

This unique die (singular dice) is made layer by layer in a 3D printer and then fired to fuse the metal particles into solid steel.
It is available in a numbered version, a version with just hearts (similar to the pendant I also make) and now a numbered version with a heart for the 1! It makes the perfect gift for the Portal fan in your life!
Each side of the cube measures 9/16" across and it is hollow so it's much lighter than it looks. Each pendant is unique and the finish may vary slightly from the images.

Weighted Companion Cube Die - Stainless Steel - (Portal Dice) (via The Mary Sue)

Portal Turrets' serenade

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 14:41:24 +0000

Zachariah Scott created this wonderful machinima video, "The Turret Anthem," capturing a marvellous musical performance by the Portal Turrets in Glados's chamber:

This video was shot on black void, using a rebuild version of glados' chamber that I put together by hand. Fun story about this video, I've been trying to make it for about 6 months, it's a super late Turret Week video. I kept overthinking it, and had much of the principal synchronization done but couldnt' figure out how I wanted to shoot it, well I sat down this weekend and knocked it out in two days, and I'm pretty sure nobody will have any problem with the results. The name of this video is The Turret Anthem, but throughout production I always referred to it by it's secret codename, Megadub, and so it sticks.

The Turret Anthem

Character from Valve's Portal 2 game is "going to actual space"

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 17:07:36 +0000

"Wheatley," an orb-shaped robot pal in Valve Software's popular 2011 game Portal 2, is on his way to space. The unauthorized stowaway is on a Japanese spacecraft now in Earth orbit, heading to the the International Space Station (ISS).

Robert Pearlman reports:

[Wheatley] is flying aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA's) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) that launched on Friday (July 20) to resupply the space station. The character, in miniature two-dimensional (2-D) form, is soaring through real space thanks to an unnamed NASA worker.
Valve announced on its website's blog that "thanks to an anonymous tech at NASA, Wheatley is actually going to actual space."
The one-eyed sphere, or "personality core" as referred to in the video game, is given its voice by English actor and comedian Stephen Merchant. On board the HTV, which is nicknamed "Kounotori or "white stork", the robot's voice is offered in the form of a phrase engraved under Wheatley's likeness — "In spaaaaaaace!" (Portal 2 players may associate that quote with another of the game's personality cores, the so-called "Space Core," though Valve attributes it to Wheatley on their blog.)

Photo: this image posted on Valve's website shows "what appears to be a circuit board with Wheatley's likeness laser-inscribed in one corner," according to Pearlman. We don't know the scale of the component, or the instrument it's part of.

Real-life Portal adventure

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:00:06 +0000

Jason Craft is very good at special effects. As proof, I offer this homebrew Portal video, in which Craft and friends animate an excellent (and rather comical) Portal adventure. I was amazed to discover that the gun itself is also animated.

My interpretation of what a real POrtal gun would be like if one existed. Based on the video game, POrtal. I tried to match the game as close as possible. This was the most challenging project I have ever undertaken, consisting of 3D tracking, seamless camera cuts and 3D camera projection. This started out as an experiment since I didn't think I could even pull it off, if I knew it would've turned out as good as it did I would've put more of a story behind it. O well, it makes up for in Visual Effects, ENJOY!
Breakdowns are coming.
For those of you that think the gun is a physical prop you can buy, well.....sorry to break the news to you, but it's entirely CG. The 3D Portal gun was replacing/covering up a painted up coffee can with tracking markers.

POrtal: Terminal Velocity (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Portal companion cube puzzle box

Xeni Jardin — Mon, 14 May 2012 13:29:19 +0000

[Video Link]

Genius animator Joaquin Baldwin, whose 3D-printed projects I've featured here before, says:

For the fans of the Portal games, this is the latest 3d-printed weirdness I made, a puzzle box. It was much harder than I expected, went through 2 prototypes to get it to work out, and I still had to fix a lot of things with a knife and sandpaper to get this model to work just right. Not for sale though, unless you wanna do the delicate carvings to fix it yourself :)

Mario/Portal mashup - DRM-free, cross-platform, brilliant

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:39:06 +0000

The Stabyourself folks have created a brilliant Mario/Portal mashup as free/open software for Linux/Mac/Windows. Check out the trailer and be amazed, then play the game and watch your free time vanish!

Two genre defining games from completely different eras: Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. and Valve's Portal. These two games managed to give Platformers and First-Person Puzzle Games a solid place in the video game world. But what if Nintendo teamed up with Valve and recreated the famous Mario game with Portal gun mechanics?
A complete from scratch recreation of Super Mario Bros. with a focus on perfectly imitating the feel the 1985 classic gave us. Then give Mario a portal gun, add puzzle game mechanics from Portal and there you go. And if that wasn't crazy enough, play 4-player coop, with everyone having their own Portal gun!

About Mari0

Portal Xmas tree

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 05:31:09 +0000

Some unknown genius (possibly redditor Tmyakal) created this insanely great Portal-themed Christmas Tree that presents the illusion of a tree being shoved through one of the interdimensional portals in the kick ass Valve game.

Update: Ryan Kelly sez, "I'm a big fan and can't tell you what a great Christmas present it was to see our Portal themed Christmas tree posted on Boing Boing. It was done by myself and my two business partners as a nice, stress-relieving break from working on a film we are making and was posted by a friend of ours on Reddit."

A Very Portal Christmas Tree (imgur.com) (via Super Punch)

Ryan writes,

Basically, it's our artificial tree which comes apart in three sections. The top section is suspended from the ceiling by an adhesive hook so it simply hangs downwards. The other two sections are connected and placed upside down on the floor - the tricky part is that the branches are meant to be kept extended out by gravity, so there is fishing line attached between each branch and what is usually the base of the tree, pulling the branches up towards the ceiling.
We then got two sets of rope lights (blue and red as we couldn't find orange). We laid the red out in a tight circle around the tree on the floor. The blue was wrapped in a circle, scotch taped to hold together, and then hung on to more adhesive hooks on the ceiling. Then we cut two circles of black poster board and placed these beneath the rope light rings to give them the feeling of holes. You barely see the black with all the branches and the portals lit up so it plays fairly well.
Finally, the hanging top piece didn't have branches that extended all the way up to the ceiling, so to cover the obvious gap we bought some artificial garland and wrapped that around it to match up with the ceiling. That way it looks like the tree continues up into the surface.
With a little bit of finessing, you can hide any of the obvious gaps and have one seamless tree.

No Escape: Portal fan-film

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 04:35:11 +0000

"No Escape" is an addition to the growing canon of high-production-value short fanfilms inspired by Portal/Portal II. Though simpler in plot than "Beyond Aperture," it's nevertheless a pretty pulse-pounding bit of entertainment, and unmistakably affectionate toward the original source.

Portal: No Escape (via Global Nerdy)