13 Van Gogh’s Paintings Painstakingly Brought to Life with 3D Animation & Visual Mapping

Ear­li­er this month, we told you how you can down­load hun­dreds of Van Gogh paint­ings in high res­o­lu­tion, cour­tesy of the Van Gogh Muse­um in Ams­ter­dam. Now, the ques­tion is, what will you do with those images? You’re a lit­tle tech savvy? Maybe make your­self a nice screen­saver. You’ve got some more seri­ous tech chops? Even bet­ter. You can put those Van Gogh images in motion. Last year, Mac Cauley ani­mat­ed Van Gogh’s 1888 paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” using Ocu­lus vir­tu­al real­i­ty Soft­ware. It’s a sight to behold. And above, we have 3D ani­ma­tions of thir­teen Van Gogh paint­ings, all cre­at­ed by Luca Agnani, an Ital­ian artist who spe­cial­izes in visu­al map­ping and design pro­jec­tions. 

Agnani’s ani­ma­tions are painstak­ing and pre­cise. Explain­ing the pre­ci­sion of his method, he told the The Cre­ators Project, “To cal­cu­late the exact shad­ows, I tried to under­stand the posi­tion of the sun rel­a­tive to Arles at dif­fer­ent times of the day.” And he added: “If the video [above] was pro­ject­ed over [Van Gogh’s] paint­ings, my inter­pre­ta­tions would super­im­pose per­fect­ly, like a map­ping of a frame­work.” To cre­ate sim­i­lar ani­ma­tions you will want to get com­fort­able using soft­ware pack­ages like Pre­miere and 3D Stu­dio Max.

The Van Gogh paint­ings appear­ing in the video are as fol­lows:

1. Fish­ing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries
2. Lan­glois Bridge at Arles, The
3. Farm­house in Provence
4. White House at Night, The
5. Still Life
6. Evening The Watch (after Mil­let)
7. View of Saintes-Maries
8. Bed­room
9. Fac­to­ries at Asnieres Seen
10. White House at Night, The
11. Restau­rant
12. First Steps (after Mil­let)
13. Self-Por­trait

h/t Kim L.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch as Van Gogh’s Famous Self-Por­trait Morphs Into a Pho­to­graph

Van Gogh’s 1888 Paint­ing, “The Night Cafe,” Ani­mat­ed with Ocu­lus Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty Soft­ware

The Unex­pect­ed Math Behind Van Gogh’s “Star­ry Night”