is this domino pyramid REAL or FAKE?! 😲 

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!)

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 😊

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.

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.

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

My first thought was that it was fake and my guess was that it was 3D rendered with green dominos and then edited like a green screen.

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.

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.

As someone who isn't a domino expert, the thing that gave it away was the multicolor domino pieces. Like at Mario's cheek, there is a domino piece that's colored red and pale to form the shape of his cheeks. There's no way you can make a piece that detailed and plan it to land at the correct spot.

It should be possible: 1. Write the numbers from 1 to 15,000 on white dominoes with a marker as you assemble them. 2. Knock the tower over and note where each domino landed and what colors they should be in order to make Mario’s face. 3. Paint and re-assemble dominoes accordingly.

It seems like it would have been difficult to build in such a tight space. Would you agree or is that plenty of space to make a pyramid of that size?

When you immediately mentioned the domino "growing" like syrup, I looked on the outer edges of Mario's face and the colors were just cutting out, so it's clearly fake.

What convinced me was the fact that some dominoes were more than one colour, like half red and half white. There is no way you could predict where any domino will land to that level of accuracy.

yeah, I agree, some dominoes are multicolored in a weird way that doesn't look common or real. But it's a really creative concept and would be super cool to make!

I'm a concept artist and I feel like it's 3d animation where the Mario is UV projection of a baked animation where the dominos already fell then reverse it. There's no transitory texture, they didn't change much. It's actually pretty creative 3d animation if i must say, the concept and execution is pretty well done.

I’ve watched enough simulation/3D animations like this to see the movement is computer generated. In fact, i also even saw a video where they can generate where it will fall, color it in its resting place, and make it so they were always colored like that. This is one of those.

I feel like the only way to get a high detail image from a falling domino structure irl would be to just make it so massive you can take a drone up and get the same effect as pixels on a screen or from a printer making it look smooth and detailed, even if it's actually fuzzy edges and 6 inches at the thinnest line

Even though it's just CGI, I'm still very impressed, especially with the sound effect, it really adds to the realism.

The give away for me that this was a render was the mirror. As the distortion going on within it didn't match the angle of the camera view at all. Which is understandable as reflective surfaces are the hardest thing to get right in a CG render.

When I first watched this, the moving dominoes (as stated at 4:40) was the first thing I saw... I immediately said "not real, definitely fake"... and then the dominoes getting smaller also is really weird. It's definitely fake!

Is it even possible to build a pyramid that size in such a confined space? I'm imagining Tom cruise hanging in a harness building it.

ok, a motion designer here :) you can build it in 3d, run a physics simulation, latting it collapse. then project the mario image on the collapsed pile, then bake the textures to the dominos. :) thats how its done!

In the 3d software Blender, one can simulate the collapse of stacked blocks very easily. Not only that, but the path each block takes as it falls is precisely recorded. You can play the collapse forward or backwards, pausing at any point. Once the blocks are all fallen, apply a texture to the blocks projected from the camera viewpoint; this will color the fallen blocks for the 'reveal' pattern. Once the blocks are colored, play the animation from the beginning and watch in wonder as a shape appears out of chaos. I've made several videos using this process; a Galton-board model was my first.

Also after the dominoes settle, you can see some jitter in some dominoes especially on the left hand side, common bug in physic sims

Those dominos do be shifting space it self 😂

I don´t have much experience with dominoes, but I made a 3d animation once for a tutorial site with blender (a 3d application), and one of the problems I had to deal with is that the domino pieces where moving a lot after they where fallen. Much like they are in this video.

It's entertaining to watch stuff like this even though it's obviously fake. It still is impressive that they put the effort into making it. After all most of us regularly watch big movies that's all fake and we know it. 🙂

I think it's a 3D render with an image transposed down over the dominoes. It looks like at one point some of the dominoes change color to maintain the integrity of the image.

you need to reach out to this guy to help him make his animations even MORE realistic!!!

the movement at the end after falling is such a simulation thing, every one who ever did a iterative processes has seen this where a few nodes just keep twitching forever if you set a maximum change between steps and not go for a predetermined number of steps as an end condition

It looks good at first. When you look closer the faults are obvious. And who builds something like that in such an enclosed space?

As a 3d blender ultra realistic animation artist, I can easily see that this is a render, it has to do with both the fluid movement after the fall, the way the domino’s falls, and as well the sound not matching the width and length of the domino’s. This is definitely fake.

the lighting and mirror instantly told me it was fake tbh

I remember a Captain Disillusion video way back where marbles were sorted in a pegged board... It was computer generated. You run the simulation and then after it's over you set the colors for the pieces as you want them and then when it's played back they all fall perfectly.

Im guessing they start with a colorless CG model and then the toppling is simulated in a physics engine. Once its on the floor, the dominos get skinned with Mario's face and then the model gets reset and it will fall exactly the same way each time. The way the dominos shifts strangely could be due to the friction values being set to low in the physics engine.

Oh my goodness Thank you for making me the community member i am forever greatfull

100% it was probably not even animated much. Most likely it is blender simulated physics, and they just projected a Mario Texture onto the dominoes. This explains why there's sliding of the dominoes at the end of the video, since the physics generated is not perfect.

Also, I'm surprised she didn't notice but you can see the dominos on the edge of a color have multiple colours. Like at the edge of the mustache, there are dominos that are part black and part brown PERFECTLY placed to make that border.

You picked up on most of the tells as well as some I didn't notice! The way the colors are added is by overlaying the image over the finished simulation, then applying the section of the image to the individual dominoes, but, they let the colors be granular enough to make these unrealistic multi-colored dominoes. They could have made it more convincing by calculating the most common color on each domino, then reducing it down to a color from a limited color pallet to avoid having multi colored dominoes, and it would let them pick out more realistic domino colors. The dominoes keep shifting after they hit the ground because the physics simulation keeps going and the dominoes are pushing on each other to prevent from clipping into each other causing them to slowly spread out. They could have made that more realistic by setting a resting movement threshold at which they could pause the dominoes so they don't keep moving. You noticed that the whole structure squished before falling. Very good eye! I didn't notice that at all. I'm guessing that the reason that happened was that they did some extra tricks to keep the tower from falling too quickly like in the earlier video of theirs you showed where it implodes. My guess is that to keep the tower from falling on its own due to the sensitivity of the physics simulation, and to keep it from falling all at once, they added some stickiness to where the dominoes touch each other, like a digital glue, so the structure would hold its shape better until the connections break. The caveat there being that squishiness you noticed since the structure was "glued" together. They could probably improve on that by pausing the pieces until a certain movement threshold at which point they could release. One tell you missed though was in the compositing, and it's one of the biggest tells. The creator was careful to add some physical geometry to the walls so the pieces wouldn't simulate past them, but they forgot to add geometry to one very telling spot, which is the step ladder leg. If you look closely, the dominoes simply go right through the leg as if it wasn't there at all, and you can even see where the real life image of the leg is blurred into the dominoes. They were very clever with the details, like the mirror to the left, but that one they missed really gives it away. They probably should have just removed the step ladder entirely.

At 5:37 when it’s really zoomed in, you can see some dominoes (mostly on the mustache) literally have two different colors on them. So like a domino could be laying with half on the mustache and half on the skin and you can see it is half brown and half tan. And this happens for many dominos. The lines are just too perfect for the domino (even if it was multi colored) to fall with every single line lining up perfectly. The animation was beautiful though so the creator still deserves a lot of credit.

It's super well done, but the main thing that made me say it's fake is the 2-coloured dominos falling exactly where they need to for Mario to look perfect. (and heck just the fact there's 2-coloured dominos in the first place)

I would now love to see a real life attempt at this kind of picture. Fascinated to see what level of detail could be possible.

Initial thought: definitely fake - you can see the dominoes magically lining up after the pyramid falls and even tiny details that are impossible to predict line up

The mirror gives it away. There’s no reason for it to be there other than to sell the illusion.

The first thing made me think it was fake, that the dominos still flow like water after they fell down

My initial thoughts: I'm 99.9% sure it's fake. While it's falling you can see the screen distorting along the falling edge. The dominoes also keep sliding like there's no friction and they slide like everything is flat. It looks to me like they built a domino pyramid and made it fall, and also made a 3D video where it would end up showing the image like that. The dominoes on the edges also have 2 colors which coincidentally line up with how the image is supposed to end up. I doubt anyone has such a deep understanding of chaos theory that they can predict exactly how they're going to fall down so they can paint them accordingly. So yeah, I'm pretty sure it's fake. Nevertheless I do think it's very well made and I can easily see how it could fool those who don't know what is going to happen in the video.

You Always impress me lily I like that you can demonstrate anything and even if it is fake you still like it like always keep on building

The reflection in the corner isn't even timed to match the pyramid...

simulating friction among blocks is apparently difficult. they often slide against one another. thats what causes the expansion.

That’s insane how real it looked! Imagine if they fixed the stretching and moving issues it might be completely undetectable! I wonder if this could be the future of domino videos!?🤔 although where would the fun of the building be?

Prior to watching the rest of the video, I don’t believe this is real. As the pyramid is collapsing, you can see the right side pieces sliding/bending slowly. And there also appears so be some pieces that accelerate faster than gravity would let them at 1x footage speed. Finally, just statistically, getting those eyes in that perfect shape just seems unlikely, even with multiple attempts.

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

They started with the Mario picture and then created the pyramid from the ground up and reversed the footage.

It is fake but it's cool to watch a pyramid that falls and creates an image

decent fake. their perfectionism gave them away, cuz the dominos had multiple colors on them at the end when they should remain solid. hopefully, the creator watches your breakdown vid here and improves their animations.

The sliding at the end is typical of computer physics simulations. Usually, the multi purpose simulators used in the VFX industries don't really have mathematical correctness because they don't need to be precise, it's just entertainment.

It's not real, this was made in CGI 😂

It was really well done, but, what did it for me is that some of the dominos were dual-coloured. Have a look at the bottom of the picture, at the edge of Mario's face. While I could believe that someone's coloured dominos to have two colours, I couldn't believe that they could build that huge domino pyramid and manage to get the half-half coloured doms to fall in exactly the right place. Yup, it's fake. :)

It didn't take me that long to realise that it was CGI

The mirror in the foreground is a nice touch as a convincer.

It was still really nice to see that. It really could be possible. Buuuuut it is like really not likely a structure like a pyramid can make an image.

1:15 first thought: there's no way this is real. The way the dominoes fall exactly into place to make the pattern is WAY too orderly and smooth, especially the eyes and the logo on the cap. The idea is cool, but I've tried similar stuff and it simply doesn't work this well

Cap'n Disillusion did a great video on how this type of effect is achieved. you basically model a pyramid, block by block, then do a physics sim to make it collapse. now you have the whole process for collapsing the pyramid, you only need the colors last. which is done by mapping colors to the finished/final state of the dominos with the proper color. then you rewind the sim and bake the colors in.

I am a 3D artist that uses blender and this is a pretty easy thing to do the way the dominoes fall is amazing and would take skill but the illusion of a image is quite easy to do for any interested you would do the simulation then make an image texture for all the dominoes and project from view meaning that for any other angle the image affect wouldn't work.

I thought it fake at once. I took one look at the "M" on the hat and knew immediately due to the sharpness. While I think some computer may be able to extrapolate a build that would result in something like it, the fall cannot be predicted with such exactness as to have such a flawless image.

I knew this was fake for the exacts reasons you thought also! I have seen many fake domino videos but i think they are for entertainment and I view them that way instead of being snarky and pointing out things to hate on it. Fake Domino videos are still cool!

It's obviously a render, you can tell by the physics of the dominoes. They took the final position, transferred the image onto the dominoes then reset the scene and ran it again. A very good quality render.

This is probably a computer simulation 1) simulate the physics motion of falling of domino 2) mark the domino on ground with different color that match Mario’s face 3) Let the same simulation run again with the color

I initially thought it was a real pyramid filmed and then the domino colours added afterward because the picture is too good to be formed out of such chaotic motion. But I didn’t see the changing size and didn’t know that real dominoes wouldn’t spread like that. I think the dominoes spreading after falling probably would happen if the dominoes surface had less friction than a normal domino but that might make it super difficult to set up in the first place because they would slip over each other and it would be difficult to make a stable structures out of them.

My personal domino experience - dominoes in such quantity have enough weight to do some odd things. Yes it looks fake, but even if its an animation you have to give them credit

If the fallen dominos were that slippery, the pyramid would have never been able to stand on its own. And the texture mapping is pretty obvious once you see the crisp image of Mario. It would be like seeing the same image of the same quality in Minecraft.

It's like the marble sorting machine. The color texture was put after the simulation was done.

Lol it's really reasonable how people got her to watch it, also the person why posted it knows A LOT of physics should I say

Computer graphics programmer here: This is called baked physics. The reason why the dominos are squishing on the pyramid is because they are being pushed together, and with the way they are positioned, it creates an effect similar to a scissor lift. The dominos moving in the end like a syrup is because of the physics simulation they used. Because there are so many physics objects in the scene, the computer has a hard time solving the collision that they almost act like a liquid. And, this is how they got the Mario image to appear in the end: They did a physics simulation of the dominos disregarding the color, recorded it, and waited for them to pile up. Then, they mapped the image of Mario to color each domino, put each domino back to its original position with its new texture, and ran the simulation again.

The gravitational field strength on some of the dominoes towards the end is immense and practically impossible for thing of this mass.

You could model this in 3D and simulate it falling as real pieces and with standard colors. If you simulate one successfully several times, perhaps a real world model can be built with instructions and colored pieces be put in specific places. If it's a large enough model, it could work.

I saw this video once, didn't think much about it, saw it again and realized how fake it looks. I like how they have a mirror in the room reflecting the dominos, a clever trick to make the animation feel more realistic.

I instantly saw it, in the first clip, there are some dominoes that change colors in attempt to blend in with the illusion of making such a perfect final picture. These are completely fake.

a rigidbody physics simulation with to low friction setting, which is why the dominoes is sliding and moving like that at the end, also possible they also increased the effect of gravity in the simulation to make it collapse better.

The easiest way to know that it is fake is the fact that if it were real the builder would have had to have 360 degrees of access which would not have been possible in such a narrow space.

The mirror being included in the video felt like it was just included to make it look real

I was willing to lend it some belief initially... It wasn't until I noticed that some of the dominos had two colors on them that lined up perfectly. THAT is absolutely impossible precision.

The reason I thought it was fake is because it’s in a corner of a room, it would be really hard to make without knocking it over. Also the way that there is not a single domino that toppled out of place in the end picture

The mirror is reflecting like the dominos are right next to it, but they're behind it a bit...

the fact that it was built so close to the walls where you dont have room to move arount the piramid to build it gave it away

also: Dominos changing color midair dominos that are 2 different colors when on the ground (like by his moustache, there are dominos that are half skin half moustache)

You can see tiles changing colour as well. I can imagine computer could design how to build this pyramid to at least resemble Marios face, but this is too good and obviously fake.

This would be really easy to fake, just run a domino simulation, once all dominos have fallen you apply a texture to the dominos to show Mario's face, then you rewind the animation. You can render the animation and composite it to video with After effects or even within blender

My initial reaction was that it's cool but something felt off. After your analysis, I could see the same mistakes that makes it clear that its a cg render. The odd colors, however, could have been 3D printed if they had the right filament colors. That doesn't make up for the fact that there were multicolor tiles that all lay perfectly.