From Anaglyphs To Anamorphosis
While we’re on the topic of 3D, here’s an amazing little tech demo for the iPhone. Anamorphosis is the process of distorting an image so that it looks good from some weird angle. Looks all stretched when you look at it straight, and all right when you’re viewing it at a 45° angle.
Brilliant animator/artist/designer and personal design hero David O’Reilly had the genius idea of combining this age old technique with the iPhone’s gyroscope. The results are nothing less than mindblowing. David wrote a simple little test app called iHologram, and had it run a 3D animation of a stylish little cat running around his 3D world. The Software anamorphs and stretches the image so that it can be viewed at a 45° angle. Rotating the iPhone around creates a perfect illusion of a window unto a parallel world. Also, that little cat is stylish cool.
iHologram - iPhone application from David OReilly on Vimeo.David says:
The iHologram app was not real. It was an illustration of an idea I had which I believe could work with the technology (combining anamorphosis and motion sensing). Unfortunately I’m just an ideas person, and I can show how things should look, but I’m no hardcore programmer.
I’d be happy to collaborate with a developer or studio who want’s to make it happen, I’m bursting with ideas for the interactive world, but right now all my attention is on filmmaking.
My aim with this was to tackle the problem of 3d viewing in an original way using current technology, not fool anyone… so for those who doubted but still supported it, respect. I hope it inspires some talented programmers out there.
The gameplay applications are indeed super arousing. A simple platforming game where you control the character’s direction by rotating the phone, and jump with a tap would be a good start, me think.
I love you, David.
Comments 6
it’s like magic! thanks for showing
Posted 25 Aug 2008 at 2:21 am ¶I haven’t played with an iphone yet, but I think it only has an accelerometer, which means it can’t determine rotation around a vertical axis. All it really knows is which direction is down. For this to work well you’d need a gyroscope in the hardware, or a camera positioned to do head tracking. (Or alternatively, I suppose some sort of lenticular lens.)
(also, I don’t think there’s any reason to support a 35-45 degree viewing angle and not support all other viewing angles as well; once you’re already detecting orientation on the fly and rendering in 3D, that seems silly!)
Posted 01 Sep 2008 at 12:02 am ¶Oops — I guess for the passive autostereoscopy you’d need integral imaging, not lenticular … or perhaps neither would work. Not sure what the angle limits on integral imaging are?
Also, Johnny Chung Lee (cmu wii remote guy) had a good demo of home-made head tracking for this kind of 3D effect.
Posted 01 Sep 2008 at 12:20 am ¶(sorry to spam your comments; last one I promise!)
Poking around, it seems that people have said pretty much what I said, but also pointed out that if you placed the phone on a titled surface & it’s sensitive enough, then the idea should work with just an accelerometer. Which is true, I think. So, assuming you’re fine playing the game in such a set up, it should work. Cool
Posted 01 Sep 2008 at 12:31 am ¶I think this concept would work well for a fez spin-off on iphone. You could spin it to move the world round. That would be cool.
Posted 09 Oct 2008 at 3:00 pm ¶As other posters stated you cant do that with the iPhone. *Maybe* with the GPhone which has a compass - but the resolution isnt probably good enough. But you can get a very cool 3d effect on the iPhone - check out “Mach Dice” which is a 3d dice rolling app. It changes the perspective based on the angle you hold the iphone. Its pretty convincing when you hold the iphone the view changes when your hand naturally shifts a little - I totally buy in to the effect.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/08/21/mach-dice-roll-for-i.html
the effect is at the end of the clip - its blurry though.
Posted 30 Nov 2008 at 3:48 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
[...] Nun zu etwas ganz anderem. Ist zwar ein ganz alter Hut, sieht aber dennoch verdammt klasse aus: Eine animierte Anamorphose auf dem iSpielzeug. Verdammt traurig, daß dieses hübschekleine Gerät so frech teuer ist. Doch ich wette Einiges darauf, daß der nächste DS dem iPhone in nichts nachstehen und nicht so snobistisch daher kommen wird ;).. (via) [...]
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