Glimpses Of A 3D Volumetric Display

January 18, 2011 by Mike Szczys 37 Comments

Custom displays are a lot of fun to look at, but this one is something we’d expect to see at a trade show and not on someone’s kitchen table. [Taha Bintahir] built a 3D volumetric display and is showing it off in the image above using a 3DS file of the Superman logo exported from Autodesk. In the video after the break you can see that the display is a transparent pyramid which allows a viewer to see the 3D object inside from any viewpoint around the display. Since first posting about it he has also added a Kinect to the mix, allowing a user to control the 3D object with body movements.

There’s basically no information about the display hardware on [Taha’s] post so we asked him about it. It works by first taking a 3D model and rendering it from four different camera angles. He’s using a custom designed prism for he display and the initial renderings are distorted to match that prism’s dimension. Those renderings are projected on the prism to give the illusion of a 3D object floating at its center.

We’re hoping to hear more details about how this was designed and what hardware is being used. We’ll post a follow-up if [Taha] shares more information.

Continue reading “Glimpses Of A 3D Volumetric Display” →

Electrodes Turn Your Eyelids Into 3D Shutter Glasses

January 16, 2011 by Mike Szczys 153 Comments

[Jonathan Post] has a way to watch 3D video without wearing shutter glasses but it might be kind of a hard product to break into the market. As you can see above, a pair of electrodes are stuck on a viewer’s eyelids, using electricity to alternately close each eye. The video after the break shows a demonstration of this technology. Obviously a camera can’t capture the image that the viewer sees, but this man describes a perfect 3D image. This reminds us of those ab exercisers that use electrodes to stimulate the muscles. Do you think a 3 hour epic would leave your eyelids tired and sore, eventually resulting and a steroid-esque muscle-ridden face?

Edit from [Caleb]: Judging from the comments, some people believe this to be an absolute impossibility. While we concur that this example is pretty silly (what’s powering those electrodes?), we invite you to watch [Daito Manabe]’s facial electrodes fun.

Continue reading “Electrodes Turn Your Eyelids Into 3D Shutter Glasses” →

Anaglyphic Photography Made Easy

November 22, 2010 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

[ProfHankD] came up with a pretty easy way to take 3D photos using a single lens. He’s making Anaglyph images which use color filtering glasses to produce stereoscopic 3D effects. We’ve seen stereoscopic imaging hacks that use two cameras or a clever combination of mirrors, but this one uses a special filter and post-processing. [ProfHankD] drew up a template that can be used to properly align two colored filters, like those in the lens cap seen above. Once installed, just snap all the pictures you want and then hit them with your favorite photo editing software. This involves separating the color channels of the photograph and offsetting them to increase the depth of focus.

It’s a nice little process, and his writeup is easy to understand even if you’re not a hardcore photography guru.

[Thanks Paul]

LED Wall And Kinect Join Forces

November 21, 2010 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

[Alex] wrote in to let us know about this Kinect controlled LED wall that was whipped up at the Tetalab hackerspace in Toulouse, France. The wall, which was built earlier in the year, uses some MAX7313 LED intensity controlling shift registers. Each gets its own board and controls the intensity of sixteen different red LEDs. They’re embedded in the wall module and covered with ping-pong balls as diffusers.

The recent activity on the project takes advantage of the Xbox Kinect. As you can see in the video after the break, they’ve used the open source Kinect drivers to capture 3D environment data, processing it into color gradients which are displayed on the Pong wall. Shouldn’t be long before they someone comes knocking on their door to install this in a dance club. We love the effect, especially because it works in a dark room and the LEDs don’t cause any interference with the video capture.

Continue reading “LED Wall And Kinect Join Forces” →

Rendering A 3D Environment From Kinect Video

November 15, 2010 by Mike Szczys 76 Comments

[Oliver Kreylos] is using an Xbox Kinect to render 3D environments from real-time video. In other words, he takes the video feed from the Kinect and runs it through some C++ software he wrote to index the pixels in a 3D space that can be manipulated as it plays back. The image above is the result of the Kinect recording video by looking at [Oliver] from his right side. He’s moved the viewer’s playback perspective to be above and in front of him. Part of his body is missing and there is a black shadow because the camera cannot see these areas from its perspective. This is very similar to the real-time 3D scanning we’ve seen in the past, but the hardware and software combination make this a snap to reproduce. Get the source code from his page linked at the top and don’t miss his demo video after the break.

Continue reading “Rendering A 3D Environment From Kinect Video” →

Futuristic 3D Mouse Originally Arduino Powered And 3D Printed

November 1, 2010 by Mike Szczys 42 Comments

We usually shy away from posting about commercial products. Strap on a bib to protect your shirt from the drool, watching the video after the break will show you why we had to post about this. [Valentin Heun] and his cohorts developed this three-dimensional controller using tools common to the hacker community. The patent-pending device uses a sphere for rotational input but can also be nudged for movement on 3 axes.

You may remember that [Valentin] as involved with that 10,000 watt flourescent lamp display. His Arduino skills were honed with that installation and used during the development of this mouse. Also joining in the prototyping fun was a 3D printer used to make the parts. From project to production, we figure the skills you use when hacking are breaking down the barriers that inventors have traditionally faced when looking to marked useful products.

This would be fantastic for 3D cad, modelling, etc. But we think it would also go well with Eagle, like the other 3D mouse hack did.

Continue reading “Futuristic 3D Mouse Originally Arduino Powered And 3D Printed” →

Fully Customized Robots

October 25, 2010 by James Munns 8 Comments

i.materialise, a custom 3D printing fabrication house are looking for talented robotics enthusiasts with the skills to design custom robotics parts such as functional frames, decorative shells, as well as unique parts required by robots to look and perform their best. The best part? They are offering free 3D printing of parts to the people they select with the most interesting or useful ideas. Make sure you check out their blog for details on what they are looking for and how to enter, as well as checking out some of the other cool things they do, such as a fully customizable 3D printed frisbee. Let us know what you design, we would love to show it off!

[via Robots-Dreams]