Psilo is a metaverse avatar project consisting of three species of uber-unique 3D characters, created by Gurmukh Bhasin (Top 100 Most Influential 3D Artists in the world by 3D Artist Magazine). These NFT avatars will be compatible with various metaverse and augmented reality platforms. Gurmukh used KeyShot to come up with and create the final look. Here we learn more about the project and its role in shaping content for the metaverse.
Modeling software used: ZBrush, Maya, and Moment of Inspiration (MoI)
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What is unique about the Psilo metaverse project and its purpose?
The in-depth storyline presents Psilocybin in a positive light, where the Tivali, a character and the hero of the story, is on a mission to track down the Psilo network to escape the galactic gangsters known as the Gilamon and enter the metaverse (which is analogous of expanding ones consciousness for the purposes of our story).
Psilo comes from the word Psilocybin, the hallucinogenic alkaloid found in mushrooms of the genus Psilocybe and is currently being studied to help people with PTSD, addiction, depression, and anxiety. It’s the future of mental health. With every Psilo NFT minted from the original collection of 8,888 NFTs, a percentage of the proceeds goes to non-profits researching psychedelic therapies. We believe Psilocybin is one of nature’s most powerful tools for both ecological improvement and human healing. Therefore, we support researching psychedelics for healing the psyche. We’re excited about the great work happening at Johns Hopkins, UCLA, Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (BCSP), and so many others. We’ve been big fans of these organizations and want to donate to support their mission.
What role did KeyShot play in the development of the Psilo avatars?
KeyShot is where everything starts to become beautiful! My favorite thing about KeyShot is using the material library to quickly drag and drop different materials onto my 3D designs to come up with the final look. Very often I will use KeyShot materials in an unconventional way to see what type of interesting results I will get and then figure out how to work a few different options together to come up with a final result that is out of the box and original.
The power of KeyShot to quickly render out many different options allows me to spend more time playing and creating the final design direction…”
For example, I rendered out a translucent skin pass for our Gilamon, but I also wanted to make the scales and horns stand out so I rendered different anodized metals on the character and then brought those renders into photoshop to see how to mix them together. It is a fun way to see what colors and material types will work well together. The power of KeyShot to quickly render out many different options allows me to spend more time playing and creating the final design direction, which always plays a huge role in the creative process.
What difference is blockchain technology making for digital artists?
For the first time in history, digital artists can create works with inherent scarcity that are properly owned by someone as opposed to just copied by anyone and everyone. If a digitally native artist wants to create a 1-of-1 piece of work and have that be the only one in existence, they can achieve that for the first time ever with blockchain technology. Even if the work is copied, it would be just that, a copy. Additionally, that artwork can be programmed, wrapped into other tokens for various utilities, used as collateral in crypto-backed loans, and so much more. In some marketplaces, works are sold freely between different parties while maintaining a royalty automatically paid back to the artist’s wallet address any time the work is resold in perpetuity. It’s a pretty amazing time to be a digital artist.
How could KeyShot help other NFT creators?
KeyShot creates extremely high-quality renders for a very professional final result. As NFTs gain popularity and importance in the future of art and design, quality naturally plays a very important role, especially when partnered alongside the quantity of the collection.
KeyShot quickly allowed me to render out all the different characters and traits with different materials, colors, textures, and lighting.”
When starting this project, wrapping my head around creating 8,888 unique images in our Psilo NFT collection was a very daunting task. We broke the collection down into three different characters, with 13 different classes and nearly 300 different 3D traits. KeyShot quickly allowed me to render out all the different characters and traits with different materials, colors, textures, and lighting. I was able to design a system of mixing and matching things together to make a unique collection where each image in the collection is beautiful, interesting, and exciting to own.
How would you explain what digital media fastened to a blockchain means for the future of digital goods?
I have never met a single person that was skeptical about crypto or blockchain that fully understood what the technology is and does. It’s important to speak to bonafide experts and dive into the industry to learn as much as possible. Digital media fastened to a blockchain is a blessing and there’s no reason that I can think of to go back to the way things were, assuming we could.
How can people get involved in or support the PSILO project?
Psilo has an active Discord community and the official links can be found on our website, enterpsilo.com. Let a Psilo Discord moderator know you’re looking for “Solve” and that you heard about Psilo on KeyShot and we’ll add you to our mintlist if spots are still available.
“Digital media fastened to a blockchain is a blessing and there’s no reason that I can think of to go back to the way things were, assuming we could.”