is this domino pyramid REAL or FAKE?! 😲

This viral video of a 3D domino pyramid reveals MARIO when it falls over!!! But there's a big debate... is it real or fake? Let's break it down in detail and find out!

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🎵 MUSIC:
Music by Mona Wonderlick


Additional music from the YouTube Audio Library:
Vampire - Emmit Fenn

[Hdominocommunity]

do you think the pyramid is real or fake?! leave your guess below before watching the entire video! (spoilers are in the rest of the comments so don't scroll down yet!)

[Patricia_Taxxon]

This kind of seemingly impossible forming of images from random stuff is actually pretty simple to do with physics simulations. You can imagine this creator setting up a simulated pyramid of dominos, letting it fall down, and then "baking" the procedure into a deterministic animation so they could then project an image of mario onto the resulting pile of dominos at the end & have them keep that color at the beginning of the sequence as well. Still impressive, but in comparison to the logistical nightmare this would be in real life I think it's 100% certain that this is a computer animated piece.

[BeigeNectarine]

It’s also in a very small room. It would be almost impossible for anyone to build a pyramid that big in a room like that.

[Nako]

The reason why I thought its fake is because he included the mirror shot to make us believe its not fake.

[KubeSquared]

For those wondering: the way you do it with CG and 3D simulated dominoes, is you run the fall simulation once with all the pieces the same color, then with the sim in its final state. you chose an angle from which you want to view it, then superimpose the image of Mario and give the pieces the "correct" color, then wind back the simulation. It's similar to those videos of marbles sorting themselves by color through a sieve machine.

[ImaginmationsCamera]

My initial reaction: I think it's fake. Something about the level of detail, and how the image slightly slides during and after the falldown seems suspicious. Also some dominoes have 2 (or maybe more!) colors on them, and the statistical improbability that a domino with 2 or more colors would fall perfectly into place like that.

[JRHainsworth]

As a 3D modeller, the slow movement of the dominoes once it falls definitely gives me the vibe of a rigidbody simulation.

[Seven-Seas-of-Baba-O-Riley]

The oozing effect is immediately odd to me, and the room looks too small to build that structure in.

[Humblee]

1:39 you know that your the domino queen when your on top of the domino social media landscape

[heckensteiner]

My grandma always said: "If you gotta make an image with a domino pyramid, use CGI." I never knew what she was talking about until now. Wise words.

[darioodde]

You can clearly see dominoes that are not one solid color at the end, but are coloured according to the final image, like half pink half brown. That tells you the image is superimposed

[etheriousjackal]

Hope he watches your video and takes in the feedback. The CGI is very impressive and it's cool that he put in all those details which made the motions so realistic, if he works on it a bit more, he could probably make it seem even more real than it already is.

[anthonyw]

Agreed on the mad props. I bet dominoe artists will keep working to make it possible. You guys are very creative so maybe one day 😊

[fluffycritter]

Captain Disillusion did a really good explanation of this sort of effect in one of his videos. In that one it was a "ball sorter" which somehow caused all the balls to bounce into the right buckets; the implementation was really simple, where the physics sim was done on uncolored balls and then at the end of it the balls got painted based on the bucket they landed in. Simple but effective.

[FredMcIntyre]

I definitely knew it was fake when I saw the dominos spreading after the fall, and the image looked too clean, especially around curves, though I didn't notice the compression of the pyramid until you pointed it out.

[subwoofer]

The shine atop Mario hat was such a give away at the end as well

[ReasonX]

Initially I thought its real, but then I asked myself: "How the hell can someone build a huge domino pyramid in such tight space"? Plus slow movements of dominos when they fall, an effect that you can usually see in 3D editors and video games.

[ericthomason]

I applaud the creator’s efforts for making this. I doubt it’s possible for a domino pyramid to reveal an image after it’s toppled. At least one that’s as photorealistic as the one in the video.

[kathleengillen]

The way they had two colours on one domino made me realise it might be green dominoes and made it mario

[marshwiggle]

It's impossible until someone with a domino setting robot decides "challenge accepted"