City-Tech.Tokyo | 3D holograms on Looking Glass
Duration: 2023.02.27 ~ 2023.02.28
Project Overview
Steampunk Digital exhibited at City-Tech.Tokyo, a large-scale tech event held at the Tokyo International Forum from 27-28 February, 2023.
At the event, the company introduced Monocle Prime, a 3D scanning application for the iPhone, which is currently under development.
To attract the attention of the participants, a Looking Glass was used for the exhibition, and 3D models scanned with Monocle Prime were displayed as 3D holograms on the Looking Glass. Here are the steps involved!
Download Quilts For Looking Glass
Looking Glass is a 3D holographic display developed by Looking Glass Factory that can be viewed with the naked eye, and can display 3D holograms of 3DCG, animations and even 2D photos taken with a smartphone’s portrait mode or a camera app that can record depth information.
For the City-Tech.Tokyo event, we exhibited three 3D models with 3D holograms using Looking Glass. Download these three samples and enjoy 3D holograms with Looking Glass!
Muffin
Skull
Dress
Tutorial: From Monocle Prime to Looking Glass
A concise walkthrough of the workflow we used in the exhibit.
Step 1: Open from Prime to Gallery
- Start Monocle Prime and select a 3D model
- In the 3D viewer, open the top-right menu and tap 'Open in Monocle Gallery'
Step 2: Export GLB from Gallery
In the Gallery, click the “Download GLB” button to export the model.
Step 3: Blender setup
- Import the .glb into Blender
- Set up an HDRI environment texture for lighting
Step 4: Turntable animation
Create a turntable animation
- Select the 3D model and click the Item tab
- Change rotation mode to XYZ Euler
- Select the Z axis input field and type '#frame'
- Use '2*pi*frame/60*2/9' to set rotation speed
Step 5: Looking Glass add-on
Configure the Looking Glass add-on
- Download and enable the Looking Glass Blender add-on
- Set up a render camera and place the model within clip start/end
- Rotate the camera X axis to 67.4°
- Adjust the focal plane to partially slice through the object
Step 6: Render multiview quilt
- Go to Addons and select the Alice/LG Addon, switch from Single View Camera Mode to Multiview
- Render an animation quilt from the Looking Glass add-on panel
- This produces a PNG sequence with 48 views per frame stitched together
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Step 7: Encode to WebM (VP9)
Combine the rendered image sequence into a video. Recommended settings:
- WebM
- VP9 codec
Note
- Maintain the same filename suffix generated in Blender (e.g., qs8x6a0.75)
- Premiere did not recognise the image sequence
- We used After Effects to convert the image sequence to .mov, then HandBrake to .webm
Step 8: Upload to Looking Glass
- Open Looking Glass Studio
- Ensure the Looking Glass device is connected to your PC
- Drag the WebM file into the 'Add hologram' area
- Click sync playlist to store hologram on Looking Glass
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Monocle Prime 3D Model on Looking Glass
Play the sample spin video to see the final result.
References
After Effects importing still images
https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/after-effects/using/preparing-importing-still-images.html