NEW: Since October 2023, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit has released dozens of 3D animations illustrating alleged Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian sites
The style is unmistakable: satellite zoom-ins, black & white wireframes, and red-textured houses - a new visual language of war
Our analysis of 43 official IDF videos found recycled 3D environments, spatial inaccuracies, and assets lifted from unrelated artists and institutions.
We traced over 30 unique assets to Washington-based 3D creator Ian Hubert, who makes bespoke models created for his sci-fi project Dynamo Dream, available to his Patreon subscribers.
Models of parking lots, antennas, + pipes were repurposed as Hamas and Iranian military sites
Hubert's assets, created as decorations for cyberpunk cityscapes, are used especially widely in animations that the IDF released during their strikes on Iran in June.
Ripped assets from Hubert are shown here in stills from IDF animations, with blue highlights:
Others assets came from scans made by the Scottish Maritime Museum of their boat-building workshop which was downloaded (via @Sketchfab) and reimagined by the IDF adornments for underground missile factories.
These assets have been used in IDF videos as recently as September 5, in an animation of the Mushtaha Tower in Gaza City, which was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes the same day
In this video the ground itself is a patch-work quilt of third-party scans of pavement & parking lots
One of most well known of these animations is video depicting Al Shifa Hospital, published in October 2023.
We found that an “underground command room” was recycled from a previous 2022 IDF animation; moreover, the street above was built from prefab @KB3D_Online storefronts
These videos are produced in-house by a small animation cell in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, working mainly in After Effects + Blender
In a TikTok posted after Israel's June attacks on Iran, soldiers describe working weeks under “prime-minister-level secrecy” to prepare visuals
The video outlines that a specific goal of these animations is to multiply their reach by cultivating secondary coverage
And indeed, dozens of major outlets like BBC, CNN and Sky News have aired them, in part or in full, often without context
I started working on this research in my spare time with a small group of fellow journos/artists — @N_Voegele, @jakecharlesrees, & Robin Kötzle — after noticing recurring patterns in these IDF 3D videos last autumn
The Ferret (via @billybriggs): theferret.scot/idf-scottish-m…
Over the months, we gathered material and analysis before working with colleagues @SRFnews, @972mag, and @TheFerretScot to bring the investigation together for their respective audiences.
SRF International podcast (via @subruSRF) srf.ch/audio/internat…
As someone who works very closely with satellite and 3D imagery, this project reinforced how crucial it is to question what’s rendered as truth.
Keep an eye out for some follow ups in different mediums looking ahead
Full story w/ @972mag via @OrenZiv_:
972mag.com/israeli-army-3…
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