Polygon Recon
A single frame from a film that does not exist — a flat-shaded polygon city shot on a virtual camera, printed with haze, halation and grain.
Polygon Recon
One frame, held still. A flat-shaded polygon city is built from the plate number alone — block grid, setbacks, masts, lit windows, signage — then shot through a virtual camera and put through a print pass: atmospheric haze, halation off the emissive pass, an anamorphic streak, chromatic aberration, vignette and grain. Nothing animates. What you get is the kind of image a camera would come back with, not a loop.
The shot is composed the way a night exterior is composed. The avenue runs straight to the vanishing point; the key light and the disc in the sky sit on the same azimuth, so every rim highlight agrees with where the light is; a foreground slab and a slung cable crop one edge, thrown out of focus by an amount the focal length decides; and there is one figure standing in the road, which is the only thing in frame that tells you how big any of it is.
The burn-in is not dressing — plate number, stock, focal length, exposure, aspect, camera height and tilt are the values that produced the frame.
New plate re-shoots everything: geometry, camera set-up, stock and weather. Typing a plate number back in returns that city exactly. Save PNG renders the frame again at up to 3840 px wide — geometry is measured against a 1080-line reference, so the file is the same shot sampled finer, and grain keeps its size relative to the frame rather than to the pixel. The preview is letterboxed to show the frame inside the player; the export is the picture area alone, at the chosen aspect.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Focal length | Real focal length against a 36 mm aperture — 16 mm sprawls the canyon, 120 mm compresses it flat |
| Camera height | Eye level in metres, from the kerb up to above the skyline |
| Tilt | Pitch of the camera; positive drops the horizon and opens up the towers |
| Roll | Dutch angle, in degrees |
| Lateral offset | Steps the camera off the centre line of the avenue |
| Frame | Aspect ratio of the picture area, from anamorphic 2.39 to 1.78 |
| Plate no. | The whole city — block layout, heights, lit windows, signage, weather |
| Density | Share of blocks that carry a building |
| Rise | Height multiplier for the towers |
| Avenue | Half-width of the open road running to the vanishing point |
| Occupancy | Fraction of windows with a light on |
| Signage | How much neon hangs on the facades |
| Haze | Atmospheric extinction — how fast distance dissolves into the horizon |
| Rain | Density of streaks across the frame |
| Search beams | Number of beams thrown up off the tallest roofs |
| Wireframe | Strength of the polygon edges over the flat shading |
| Stock | Ten night grades: sky, concrete, sodium light and channel gain |
| Exposure | Stops, through a filmic shoulder that holds the highlights |
| Halation | Bloom and the anamorphic streak, taken from the emissive pass only |
| Grain | Strength of the grain, weighted toward the midtones |
| Lens | Vignette and chromatic aberration together |