New follower? I’m Greg Madison. I’ve been pioneering tangible interfaces in XR for decades: making digital illusions part of the physical world, keeping us grounded in it. A thread on the ideas behind my work. 🧵 Here’s an early exploration from 2009. fr.slideshare.net/slideshow/…

claude opus 5.5 can now build, rig and animate full 3d scenes inside blender... the trick is letting opus orchestrate instead of model, but there’s a smart way to set it up: - step 1: install blender 5.2.2 and the official blender mcp server - step 2: open claude, pick opus 5.5 on high effort, run /mcp to confirm blender is connected - step 3: install blender kit (edit > preferences > install from disk) for 140k+ free models, materials and hdris - step 4: ask opus “can you see the blender kit library?” so it runs a test search before you build - step 5: paste a reference image and a plain prompt. talk to it like a junior 3d designer, no structured prompts - step 6: for characters, ask for the rig in the same prompt (“keep it realistic, rig it for smooth animation”) - step 7: render a 480p preview first, then the final render (1080p can take 1-2 hours) who does what: - blender kit: chairs, couches, cars, wood beams, textures - opus 5.5: writes the code, places assets, sets lights, rigs, animates - blender: renders every frame - you: review and fix the small stuff by hand and the rule that saves the project... never let opus build a chair from scratch. it burns tokens and still looks fake. pull the asset and let opus arrange it i like to check animations step by step before the final render. a glitch you miss early costs you 2 hours later

Just like many of you I was also fascinated by the iPhone Duo Opening animation. This is what differentiates Apple from the rest. I wanted to really understand how it was implemented . This really showcases Apple embraces the material of glass and how that might have led them to this. The idea is very simple. A sheet of glass folder over the UI and because of the glass' frosted nature, you see the blur as the glass goes farther away from the UI. I wanted to see if I can do it with a simple mechanic with apple's tools so I used Reality Composer Pro 3 to toy with the idea. I don't think apple have actually implemented it this way but here is my take on it. The iPhone duo is a glass Portal that shows the world underneath it. I put the UI in a portal world that is sitting just under the glass and put a portal component on the inner and outer display glass. the portal is layered with another piece of a plane that has a shader that blurs the display based on it's distance from UI. This was done in a simple shader graph with the BlurredBackground node and some math. Because the UI is the only thing in the portal, you see the black void when turning it. There is literally no 3D models here just few planes, portals and a shader and that gives me this effect in RCP3, No code was written, no AI was used. just appreciation of the design. there are many ways to do this but every once in a while there comes an interaction that must be studied and appreciated.

Imagine if this was the new standard for movie watching… this has gotta be on my bucket list 😭