Come for the incredible reporting, stay for the “I think I felt like shitting my pants or something”: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfWy...

Totally, the similarities there is something we discussed early on while looking into this topic. Super interesting to consider. Although in that case the illustration was from the Times of London, iirc

Definitely, this is something we also discussed parallels with early on

Thank you, Eliot!

Thanks for the kind words Thomas 🌱

Thanks dear Eman!

As someone who works 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.com via Oren Ziv:

www.972mag.com/israeli-army...

Over the months, we gathered material and analysis before working with colleagues @srfnews.bsky.social, @972mag.com, and @theferret.scot to bring the investigation together for their respective audiences.

SRF International podcast (via Susanne Brunner) www.srf.ch/audio/intern...

I started working on this research in my spare time with a small group of fellow journos/artists — Nicole Vögele, @jakecharlesrees.bsky.social , & Robin Kötzle — after noticing recurring patterns in IDF 3D videos last year

The Ferret (via @billybriggs24.bsky.social): theferret.scot/idf-scottish...

The TikTok 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

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

One of the earlier and most-viewed examples was an animation of Al Shifa Hospital, published in October 2023.

The “underground command room” was recycled from a 2022 IDF animation of an UNRWA school in Tel Al-Hawa; the street above was built from prefab @kb-3d.bsky.social storefronts

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

Others assets came from scans made by the Scottish Maritime Museum of their boat-building workshop which was downloaded (via @sketchfab.bsky.social) and reimagined by the IDF adornments for underground missile factories.

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:

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.

Scans of parking lots, antennas, and pipes were repurposed as Hamas and Iranian military sites

Many of these “illustrations” aren’t based on verified intelligence at all.

Our analysis of 43 official IDF videos found recycled 3D environments, spatial inaccuracies, and assets lifted from unrelated artists and institutions.