Looking Glass Portrait Project

I got the opportunity to work on a special exhibit for the NC State University Libraries to display student-created work on the Looking Glass Portrait!

What is the Looking Glass Portrait?

The Portrait, created by Looking Glass Factory, features scenes with 3D volume utilizing light field displays, or holograms. You can use 3D modeling programs such as Blender or Maya to create scenes that transfer to the device to display with depth and tridimensionality, or even just photographs! By exporting images or frames of an animation in multiple angles - it's like a portal to another world!

Looking Glass Portrait Install Documentation

Documentation

I started this project by making this introductory guide to setting up a Looking Glass Portrait for the Virtual Reality Studio space of the D.H. Hill Library.

My goal was creating an easy to follow document that will allow anyone to setup the Portrait.

Creating Holograms

Then I got to work with creating a playlist of holograms to display on the device. The playlist was made in collaboration with another creative Jeff Wilkinson.

Many of them were adapted from previous projects done in Blender - a Looking Glass camera addon makes the conversion super easy!

I learned a lot about framing and composition, as well as studied how to achieve effective changes in depth and perspective with both 3D and 2D assets.

Because the Portrait has a 58 degree viewing cone, I had to consider what assets were important enough to be included in the scene, and where focal points should lie.

Publishing and Exhibition

I collaborated with a ton of amazingly talented people to bring the exhibits together. The portrait would be featured in the James B. Hunt Jr Library's Apple Tech Showcase, and the D.H. Hill Library's Innovation Studio, two spaces that regularly showcase work from NCSU students and faculty as well as new and experimental technology!

Exhibition Information and Documentation

I worked with the University public relations team and UX designers to create a placard design that displayed information about the device and exhibit.

Drafted a placard mockup I created with display information text. I collected a series of thumbnails for the playlist as well.

This was the final design, made by the Public Relations team!

The University Libraries website also published an article about showcasing the holograms, which you can read here!

I put on my Graphic Design hat and put together the display images for the article, re-using assets made from the holograms.

The holograms looked great on the Portrait! Capturing video of the device was spotty however, so I signed up for Looking Glass Factory's Blocks beta. Blocks allows creators to upload their holograms online to be viewed on any smartphone device or VR headset! You can view our library playlist online here!

Video taken by Colin Keenan

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