[HN Gopher] Black 3.0 - The blackest black acrylic paint ___________________________________________________________________ Black 3.0 - The blackest black acrylic paint Author : woliveirajr Score : 195 points Date : 2021-07-19 13:33 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (culturehustle.com) (TXT) w3m dump (culturehustle.com) | kissgyorgy wrote: | This looks like quite confusing to the eye (brain). | isoprophlex wrote: | These ultrablack paints are all carbon nanotube based, right? | | Sounds pretty carcinogenic to me. The website makes it out to be | "non toxic" though. I wonder if I'm too paranoid... anyone knows | what's the pigment made of, exactly? | whatshisface wrote: | Good point. Carbon nanotubes are carcinogenic. | | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5799097/ | NikolaeVarius wrote: | Well, dont eat paint chips. | pixl97 wrote: | More about the dust that is generated when the product is | used. | dekhn wrote: | No, that's vantablack, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack | for which a company has a patent. I believe black3.0 is much | more conventional paint (pigment based, rather than structural | color based) See https://www.ko-pro.black/190516black30/ | masklinn wrote: | The company's patent is a thing, but as explained down the | page black 3.0 exists specifically because the company | granted Anish Kapoor an exclusive artistic use license to | Vantablack S-VIS, so no other visual artist can use S-VIS. | | Also of note: there are variants of Vantablack with aligned | and unaligned nanotubes, as well as non-nanotubes-based | variants (the VBx series). | | There is also a non-surrey nanotubes-based paint called | Singularity, created by Nanolab in partnership with Jason | Chase, and an other "very black" non-nanotubes paint called | Musou. | | I don't know how Musou compares to 3.0, and last time I'd | checked Singularity was slightly more reflective than Vanta. | They do have the avantage (for artists) of being available | though, and Musou and 3.0 are pretty normal paints. | mike_d wrote: | To nit pick a bit on "so no other visual artist can use | S-VIS" | | It is not that the company made a deal to exclude other | artists, but that they made an exception to allow one | artist. | | You as an individual, and likely you as a corporation, | can't buy Vantablack. You have to provide technical | drawings and a detailed writeup of your product, submit it | for review to the company, they send it to the UK | government, etc. until eventually they tell you it will be | tens of thousands of dollars to paint something the size of | a Netgear router and that only their paint shop can apply | the coating. | smnrchrds wrote: | What is Vantablack used for? Besides Anish Kapoor's art, | is there any information on what else it has been | incorporated in? I imagine some of its uses are | classified, but are there some other ones that are known? | faebi wrote: | Why are the dashboards of cars not painted in this or similar | colors? I want to have minimum reflections but the temperature is | probably the problem. | nitrogen wrote: | Polarized sunglasses will significantly reduce the visibility | of dashboard reflections. | stan_rogers wrote: | No, it's because most of the "blackest" finishes are extremely | delicate, as they rely on a sort of micro-velvet structure to | trap light as well as absorbing light. There are _relatively_ | sturdy solutions - fabrics, mostly - but they tend to be | absolute dust magnets, and look rather ratty in a short time | unless kept scrupulously clean. Between the high maintenance | and the immediate grunge regardless of maintenance, they don 't | sell well. (Photographers, on the other hand, love the stuff | despite the fact that there's an extra few minutes doing a | detailed tidying before every shot.) | airstrike wrote: | https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s... | a9h74j wrote: | I understand the purposes, but from another angle: | | _Bikeshedding has reached a new extreme. We are debating what | color of black to use._ | a9h74j wrote: | Update: Did not read and made a low-effort attempt at | flippancy. Regret. ... Agree 100% about important design | choices in shades and finishes. | femto113 wrote: | At this point the different blacks are less about color and | more about finish/reflectivity. Even if you decide to paint | your bikeshed a lovely Celeste green you'd still have to choose | whether you want eggshell or semigloss. | Igelau wrote: | This isn't bikeshedding at all. In art and design, black has | never been just one color. It's always been a choice of which | ones to use. Here are some examples from printing: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_black | aksss wrote: | Yes, I painted my home theater "black", and ended up down a | rabbit hole of "well, which black??". Ended up painting the | ceiling and trim a slightly different black than the walls. | Probably only I am consciously aware of the difference. | jasonwatkinspdx wrote: | So I think you're missing that first, this was motivated as a | troll, and second, in art variations of black _absolutely_ do | matter and are not simple bike shedding. | | The troll happened because an artist named Anish Kapoor was | able to negotiate exclusive access to a patented black | paint/coating based on carbon nanotubes named Vantablack. He's | the only artist allowed to use it globally. That didn't sit | well with some people who decided to troll back. | | I haven't done any art since I was in my late teens, but at the | time a couple of my works were focused on very dark subjects. I | found ordinary acrylic paint just wasn't black enough for what | I wanted. Eventually I found that spraying liquid India ink | with an airbrush repeatedly got the effect I was looking for. | cbsmith wrote: | Black 3.0 has been around for quite a while, the newest thing is | Black Mirror: | https://www.culturehustleusa.com/collections/black/products/... | alfalfasprout wrote: | The finish looks quite bad though in that shiny paint. Though | maybe it can be hand sanded and polished to a piano black | finish. | cbsmith wrote: | I think it's really hard to judge from a photograph, but | Semple is, if nothing else, a fantastic promoter, so your | skepticism is warranted. | amifty wrote: | Blackest black explains!!!! | meetups323 wrote: | A neat material. I had a decorative mirror that unfortunately | shattered, I was able to paint the backing with this and mount | the shards atop. Creates a cool contrast, with the mirror | reflecting nearly 100% of visible light and the the backing | nearly 0%. | | I also took some shards of the mirror and coated them with the | black, then mounted them throughout the house. It makes it look | as if some of my universe's texture shards didn't fully load or | the backface culling algorithm is buggy. :) | | It an interesting material to look at, the uniformity gives your | eye nothing to hold on to, making it hard to focus. I recommend | trying it out it for anyone interested, the small bottle is | pretty cheap and covers just over a square meter. (I needed a few | coats, if you preprocess the surface according to the | instructions you'd probably lose less to absorption and get more | coverage) | Navarr wrote: | I would love to see a picture of this | lisper wrote: | A photo could not possibly capture the effect. Turn your | monitor off and you will see what a digital photo of this | black would look like. | jjeaff wrote: | Sure it would. And capturing the contrast between the | regular wall and the black would give you much better | results that turning your monitor off too. | | There are lots of cool photos out there of super black | material. | lapetitejort wrote: | I turned my monitor off and saw the most disgusting | creature staring back at me. No idea why you'd want to | paint that around your house. | zmix wrote: | Yes, photos, please :-)! | sinalc0 wrote: | Second this | MikeDelta wrote: | Man, wish the Rolling Stones had this back in the day when they | wanted to paint that door. | crb3 wrote: | They could have used matte black tempera (Sanford's IIRC). Back | in the day, I played around with (analog) photocopier rendition | of pen-and-ink drawings and found that large black inked areas | developed faded centers. Coating the ink there with said | tempera fixed the dropouts. | thanatos519 wrote: | I have used culturehustle's matte paint on most of the stuff in | front of me - monitor bezels, speakers, desk - and it makes sure | that the lit things appear to be floating in space at night. | dang wrote: | Some past related threads, including about this blackest black | and the other blackest blacks: | | _Guy Creates Darkest Room with the Blackest Black Paint_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25758913 - Jan 2021 (1 | comment) | | _Another Artist Made His Own Superblack-and Now It's Even | Blacker_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25402799 - Dec | 2020 (2 comments) | | _MIT creates blackest black that is darker than Vantablack_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21118636 - Sept 2019 (17 | comments) | | _Black Blacker Than Vantablack_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21093784 - Sept 2019 (94 | comments) | | _New carbon nanotube-metal hierarchical material is 10x darker | than Vantablack_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20973667 | - Sept 2019 (68 comments) | | _BMW unveils "blackest black" car sprayed with Vantablack_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20820000 - Aug 2019 (28 | comments) | | _Vantablack, one of the darkest substances known_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19106541 - Feb 2019 (4 | comments) | | _BLACK 3.0 BETA blackest black acrylic paint_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19044406 - Jan 2019 (2 | comments) | | _One Artist Has a Monopoly on the World's Blackest Black | Pigment_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16873089 - April | 2018 (1 comment) | | _The World's "Blackest Black" Makes Its Debut-On a Building_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16342651 - Feb 2018 (1 | comment) | | _Anish Kapoor is given exclusive rights to Vantablack, the | purest black paint_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11209692 - March 2016 (4 | comments) | | _New Super-Black, Light-Absorbing Material Looks Like a Hole in | Reality_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8058840 - July | 2014 (7 comments) | | _Scientists have developed a material so dark that it can 't be | seen_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8030459 - July 2014 | (42 comments) | | _Scientists develop material so dark you can 't see it_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8027446 - July 2014 (7 | comments) | inlikealamb wrote: | There's a lot of backstory to this... it's a dig against | Vantablack, which Anish Kapoor (famous sculptor) managed to buy | exclusive rights for using in art: | | https://www.wired.com/story/vantablack-anish-kapoor-stuart-s... | fennecfoxen wrote: | For those who haven't heard of him before, Kapoor did the Bean | in Chicago. | IncRnd wrote: | Apparently he has done tons of work. His website is a | straight list of image links left to right and up & down. | | https://anishkapoor.com/ | tmmx wrote: | Anish Kapoor is not happy that people are calling it the | bean. Cloudgate is the official name. | bbarnett wrote: | The Amish grow lots of beans, and I doubt they like | nanotubes. | _jal wrote: | ...Another good reason to call it the bean. | blamazon wrote: | Ah, so you mean the official name is "the bean"? | ThePadawan wrote: | Just bear with me here. | | Wouldn't it be funny if people only knew him as the guy | famously slammed for getting a monopoly on Vantablack? If at | all. | kwhitefoot wrote: | Apart from a wonky bit of space frame crap the black colour | foolishness is in fact all I know about him. | SamBam wrote: | I misread this (ambiguous) line at first | | > In 2017, Semple also released a cherry-scented version of the | Vantablack pigment exclusively licensed to Kapoor. | | and thought that Semple had mixed cherry-scent with Vantablack | and licensed it to Kapoor exclusively. It would have been an | interesting move, particularly from a legal perspective, | although I would have expected a different scent than cherry... | jchw wrote: | Indeed, and it looks like 3.0 still maintains this feud: | | > *Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that | you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish | Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish | Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your | knowledge, information and belief this material will not make | it's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor. | katabatic wrote: | Dragging Anish Kapoor never, ever gets old. | adrusi wrote: | That's, I think, a deliberate facet of Kapoor's art. | dan_pixelflow wrote: | There's a Tom Scott video about another one of Stuart's products, | and an explanation for the Anish Kapoor message: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NzVmtbPOrM | domenici2000 wrote: | Thanks, came back for this hehe | Tsiklon wrote: | The Stuart Semple vs. Anish Kapoor "beef" is one of my | favorites to read about, utterly harmless and unbelievably | petty, it entertains me to no end. | tenaciousDaniel wrote: | I really want a mechanical keyboard coated with this. | ksec wrote: | Are there any piratical purpose in doing it? | tenaciousDaniel wrote: | Not at all, would just look cool (in theory). Unfortunately | the replies prove that it's impossible, at least right now. | stevenpetryk wrote: | You can paint your black flag even blacker. Think of the | plundering! | Pet_Ant wrote: | I mean if you wanted black box for photographing things and | wanted to minimise bounce lighting. This paint guarantees | that only direct light would illuminate the subject. | robbedpeter wrote: | It'll make yer skull 'n crossbones really pop, matey! | sneak wrote: | As others have pointed out, this will only work until you touch | it. I use the Das Keyboard ultimate, which is matte black and, | while partially reflective (and moreso on the keycaps where | finger oil accumulates) it's still pretty great-looking. | EliasWatson wrote: | TaeKeyboards has a video where he does that: | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKpsohmQMwE | | It looks pretty good, but you can't put a clearcoat on it, so | it's not durable enough to actually use as a keyboard. Still a | fun item to have on your shelf though. | 1-more wrote: | Wait can you not clearcoat it because it ruins the effect? Or | is it somehow too weak to accept a clear coat? | h327 wrote: | The clear coat would ruin the effect by reflecting light, | making the paint look less black | robbedpeter wrote: | A low gloss tough coating will add to the reflectivity, but a | high gloss highly transparent coating might look really cool | still. | Eric_WVGG wrote: | Unfortunately surfaces coated with this (or Vantablack) cannot | be touched, the coatings that creates the effect are too | delicate. | | It's basically good for art projects and scientific | applications. | [deleted] | eropple wrote: | Semple also sells an acrylic black paint which, while not | _this_ black, is pretty dang black and can be touched. | atVelocet wrote: | And what's the name of it and where can I get it? | yifanl wrote: | https://culturehustle.com/collections/black/products/rave | n-c... | | It mentions it's fabric-safe, so presumably durable | enough for keyboards. | chromaton wrote: | From the website: | | >Q. Can I paint my car / bike etc... | | >A. NO - 3.0 is quite fragile and will just scratch off, it | won't weather well. | [deleted] | aquir wrote: | I wanted to paint my laptop with it but seeing this answer on | their website made me sad :-( | prox wrote: | Just paint it every week ;) | amelius wrote: | Painting your car white is the least you can do for the | planet. | | https://www.independent.co.uk/climate- | change/news/painting-r... | Sebastian_09 wrote: | seems it absorbs a bit less light than vantablack but the | comeback at Kapoor is quite fun | https://www.dezeen.com/2019/02/05/black-3-0-stuart-semple-an... | dang wrote: | This is in the feature list of the OP too: * | Not available to Kapoor | kingofpandora wrote: | > "That," he said, "that... is really bad for the eyes." | | > It was a ship of classic, simple design, like a flattened | salmon, twenty yards long, very clean, very sleek. There was just | one remarkable thing about it. | | > "It's so... black!" said Ford Prefect. "You can hardly make out | its shape... light just seems to fall into it!" | | > The blackness of it was so extreme that it was almost | impossible to tell how close you were standing to it. | | > "Your eyes just slide off it..." said Ford in wonder | 8ig8 wrote: | Nigel Tufnel: "It's like, how much more black could this be? | And the answer is none -- none more black." | | This Is Spinal Tap | (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds7FRivVMgA) | perl4ever wrote: | https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fuligin | | "the hue fuligin, which is darker than black, admirably erases | all folds, bunchings and gatherings so far as the eye is | concerned, showing only a featureless dark. | drewzero1 wrote: | > "Looks like a fish, moves like a fish, steers like a cow." | aaroninsf wrote: | This line always perplexed me as a kid. | | I got (still get) stuck on the overlap between moving, and | steering. Moving like a fish seems to include sinuous paths, | schooling with sudden acceleration and darts to the side, | etc... nimbleness and speed. | | I understood it was a proxy for "accelerates like/is as fast | as" but found that unsatisfying. | | Also, cow works to evoke large, stubborn perhaps, | unresponsive... but was an odd choice in as much as few try | to steer cows. Shepherd, maybe. A water buffalo or ox or even | mule felt like a missed opportunity, since they are | prototypically steered and there is a sense of their | owners/drivers laboring against their desire to not labor... | | Total Nicolson Baker rabbit hole, just a specific reading | experience that has always stood out from that series. I have | uttered that line countless times over the years in various | contexts, including while dancing late at night on the playa. | JackFr wrote: | Yikes. It means young (neutered) male cattle prefer a cow. | lurquer wrote: | Indeed. | | Face-palm. | | Reminds me of another 'joke' I never got which, for all I | know, might have been obvious to everyone else: | | "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other | side." | | I never knew that "the other side" was referring to | death... like, at a seance when you contact the "other | side". | | Apparently the joke was a big hit in the days of the | Spiritist movement (back with Houdini, Doyle, and all the | others promoting or debunking seances.) | | I thought it was some intentionally stupid joke about | crossing a road. Doh. | JackFr wrote: | TIL... | gweinberg wrote: | I think the "intentionally stupid" interpretation is | correct. I think the original answer was "to get from the | left to the right", which later got shortened. | Hallucinaut wrote: | I had two jokes in a jokebook at my grandparents place | that stumped me as a kid. | | Waiter: How did you find your steak sir? Man: I looked | under a mushroom and there it was | | I could only put it down to a terrible, Christmas cracker | level pun on "much room". | | The second was something like "What has three feet but no | legs? A yard stick" with a picture of a ruler with three | feet on it. I found that utterly perplexing... the joys | of living in a metric country with predominantly imported | imperial system based media! | | Both took me probably over a decade to understand. | Crespyl wrote: | Hah, somehow I never once made that connection. "Flies | like a banana" has been an old favorite, but out of | context I just never picked up on this version despite | many re-reads. | cardiffspaceman wrote: | Time flies like an arrow / Fruit flies like a banana. | donio wrote: | A recent kickstarter, no idea how they compare: | https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/311352786/horizon-black | parsecs wrote: | I own a bottle of this stuff, and it's not really as amazingly | black as it looks on camera. Sure, it's pretty damn black. But | it's easy to see the imperfections and stuff up close. There was | a video that compared it to black felt, which is pretty similar. | | And no, this is not Vantablack. It's just some special acrylic | that can hold a lot of black pigment, and a lot of black pigment. | Vantablack needs to be "grown" with high temperatures so its | usually seen on aluminum foil and such. | | Overall, this is pretty cool. I could definitely believe that | it's the blackest acrylic paint in the world. However it doesn't | create a "black hole" or anything. | [deleted] | sangnoir wrote: | > And no, this is not Vantablack. | | you may have missed the bit where they mention that this paint | is available to everyone _who is not Kapoor_ - Anish Kapoor | signed a contract that grants him exclusive rights to use | Vantablack for art projects. | stavros wrote: | I think OP means "this is nowhere close to Vantablack", not | "do not think this is actually Vantablack". | ChrisMarshallNY wrote: | _> Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you | are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish | Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish | Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your | knowledge, information and belief this material will not make it | 's way into the hands of Anish Kapoor._ | | I love drama... | wodenokoto wrote: | For people not in on the drama: Anish Kapoor somehow has | exclusive rights to Vanta Black, the blackest black paint, so | in return, the pinkest pink and now the blackest acrylic paint | are banning Anish Kapoor, who for some reason was petty enough | to break the ban. I mean, if you want other people to respect | your exclusive rights to vanta black, you should at least | respect other color exclusivity clauses. | | https://www.dezeen.com/2016/12/30/anish-kapoor-uses-stuart-s... | garrickvanburen wrote: | A very fun, very NSFW podcast that goes deep into the drama | | http://citationpod.com/episode/the-blackest-black/ | marcodiego wrote: | So dark it makes difficult to note relief. Maybe it is a good | choice to paint telescope tubes' interior. | samatman wrote: | That's the whole idea. | | It wouldn't be much of an absorber of all visible radiation | which hits it, if it bounced enough back to make out textural | details. | sjackso wrote: | If you're interested, here's a thread of telescope nerds | discussing that exact usage: | https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/692954-how-black-is-the-b... | notJim wrote: | Well... the price was reasonable, something around $26 for | 150 ml bottle including shipping to Pennsylvania (USA), and | I am not Anish Kapoor so I decided to give the paint a try. | | Since many of us are amused by the Anish Kapoor situation, I | wanted to highlight this wry comment from your link. | davidkunz wrote: | Can't wait to mix it with the whitest white to get the grayest | gray. | runawaybottle wrote: | Here is the BMW Vantablack: | | https://www.bmwusa.com/concept-vehicles/vantablack-x6.html | | I believe it is illegal since no one can see it at night. | | Video: https://youtube.com/shorts/17VlV62q5r0?feature=share | fabbari wrote: | I may be stupid and missing the point - but this part from the | BMW page made me laugh: "This nanostructure paint finish, among | the blackest ever made by man, tricks the viewer's perception | of the car as a three-dimensional shape." -- oh, the magic. You | paint a 3D object with this paint and it looks 3D. | | I am guessing they meant 'two-dimensional'. | [deleted] | frosted-flakes wrote: | I don't see anything wrong with the sentence. The black paint | tricks the viewer's normal perception of the car as a three- | dimensional shape, to make it seem like it's two-dimensional. | Are you understanding it differently? | mdorazio wrote: | Yes. The idea is that without being able to differentiate | features, a 3d object painted with it looks basically like | a silhouette, so your brain interprets it as a 2d object. | cirrus3 wrote: | The sentence is fine and means what you think it should. You | are reading it wrong. | [deleted] | csw-001 wrote: | Hey, Finally a way to make the lines of a BMW attractive... ;-) | HankOcean wrote: | No matte black on the ride cuz it's stale | throwawayboise wrote: | Never heard of a car color being illegal. As long as it has the | mandated lighting and reflectors, how could it not be visible | at night? | folago wrote: | Fulgin color straight from "the book of the new Sun" saga. | emptysongglass wrote: | If only. The day real fuligin is available for purchase is the | day I discard all other clothing and prance around in an | oversized fuligin cape twenty four hours a day for the rest of | my life. | KozmoNau7 wrote: | It would be horrendously hot, so maybe only use it as a | winter coat. | fleddr wrote: | Nice, a niche topic I am in on. I've experimented with a few of | these materials for photography. | | One thing that is good to know is that the extreme darkness you | typically see in demonstration videos where any sense of depth | disappears, is not true to life. | | Even indoors, with plain daylight shining inwards, and judging | the object with your own eyes, will not give the effect. You'll | perceive it as gray and extremely matte. | | The difference can be explained by Youtubers picking favorable | light conditions, but also because the camera capturing said | video tends to have a smaller dynamic range compared to your own | eyes. I believe it has been experimentally established that human | beings can detect even a single photon: | | https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-human-e... | | So don't expect full magic. Fun can still be had though, like | half-magic. I have a background painted with a very dark paint | (more on the brand in a minute) with inside of it a figure | painted with the same paint. With artificial lighting in my | office, you can't see the figure at all. When picking up the | figure, even directly looking at it won't give away any sense of | depth. | | Anyway, the paint I use is Musou Black, which is claimed to be | darker than Black 2.0 or 3.0: | | https://www.ko-pro.black/product/musou-black-paint/ | | Their darkness is compared by their maximum light absorption | rate, supposedly Musou has the highest: 99.4%. Do know that | actual absorption depends on your method of painting. Ideally, | you thinly spray paint several individual layers for maximum | effect. | | This same company (I promise I don't work for them) has a | material I find far more intriguing. It's called Fineshut Pro. | | Whereas the paints you can see as organic, meaning the way you | apply it matters, the sheet is "pre-engineered". In the real | world, the difference is huge. In particular the sheet also has | the full darkness effect in unfavorable light conditions (direct | daylight). However, only when light hits at a particular angle. | sprior wrote: | When I got my Black 3.0 bottles via the Kickstarter I turned two | wooden eggs and painted one with their gold and one with Black | 3.0. Here's a picture of the two taken in a very well lit | workshop: | https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10159690521351509&set=a... | | It looks like the black egg was Photoshopped out of the picture, | but I promise it looked the same in person and that table used as | a background is painted 20% gray. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-07-19 23:01 UTC)