Stunning iPad Holograms Are The iPad's Most Magical Feat Yet (VIDEO)

When Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the iPad as a "magical" device, could he have imagined this?

Dentsu London, an ad agency, and BERG, a design consultancy, teamed up to create a stunning stop-motion animation video of iPad "light paintings"--floating, colorful holograms that Gizmodo calls "the most magical thing I've seen the iPad do yet."

BERG says the project, "Making Future Magic," was inspired, in part, by the question, "What might a magical version of the future of media look like?"

BERG explains how the glittering, ghost-like iPad "light-paintings" were created:

First we create software models of three-dimensional typography, objects and animations. We render cross sections of these models, like a virtual CAT scan, making a series of outlines of slices of each form. We play these back on the surface of the iPad as movies, and drag the iPad through the air to extrude shapes captured in long exposure photographs. Each 3D form is itself a single frame of a 3D animation, so each long exposure still is only a single image in a composite stop frame animation.

Each frame is a long exposure photograph of 3-6 seconds. 5,500 photographs were taken. Only half of these were used for the animations seen in the final edit of the film.

See their work in the video below. For more magic, check out this iPad magician, as well as the most surprising uses for Apple's iPad.

WATCH:

Making Future Magic: iPad light painting from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

Comments

[Z-Liberator]

05:40 PM on 09/19/2010

Why are they wasting their time this could easily be done on ADOBE FLASH?

[Madbunny]

01:32 PM on 09/20/2010

Coming up with new ways to do stuff isn't a waste of time. Sure, they could also have used a printer and printed out each of the images on paper as well.

Adobe Flash, for all of it's power, doesn't have the flexibility of a fully fledged 3d program, at a guess I'd say that's why.

[studmoose]

08:38 PM on 09/18/2010

Looks like something that was run throught the free Paint.net application.

[kkrimmer]

07:17 PM on 09/18/2010

The video from 10-20 seconds was amazing, not sure about the rest. Can see this as an awesome signage technique.

[artist-53]

05:09 PM on 09/17/2010

I've no clue as to what I was just looking at, but it was amazing. Maybe I'm easily impressed? Nah...

Attn: SJ, I want an iPad II . Yes I'm still begging.

[Madbunny]

01:35 PM on 09/20/2010

a camera with a lens open creates an overexposed image. "light trails' in other words, you see it any time that you use a long exposure on a freeway at night. All they did was take advantage of this and used an Ipad for the images. If you were creative with your videos you could do the same thing with a cellphone, or any small screen that you can move around capable of showing videos.

[artist-53]

03:13 PM on 09/20/2010

Thank you for explaining it to me. I'll have to do some experimenting. But I appreciate the fact you took the time to explain the process. So I guess I can rip up that Nobel prize with their name on it...the one I was going to submit??:-) It's more the technology that they are taking advantage of...Thank you again.

[AMizrachi]

03:11 PM on 09/17/2010

This is NOT something that only the iPad can do. A laptop or other similar device (even a smart phone screen) could do the same thing. The talent isn't iPad's. The talent is in London at Dentsu. This is a misleading article...

[hypnotoad72]

10:25 AM on 09/17/2010

That's not a hologram, which would be a real-time 3D image.

That video clearly states the process.  

[studmoose]

10:24 PM on 09/18/2010

Somebody must be getting royalties here, either sanction by the site or on the side.

[studmoose]

10:27 PM on 09/18/2010

Sorry, royalties denotes some type of ownership. This would be more in the form of some type of consideration, whether santioned here or without site sanctioning (on the side). There are too many Apply articles in relationship to REAL technology articles.

[Steven Hebert]

09:24 PM on 09/16/2010

I don't understand the use of an ipad for this technical demo other than hype. And I honestly got bored after the first 30 seconds.

[Madbunny]

01:41 PM on 09/20/2010

Well you could do this with anything that has a portable screen, such as a laptop, smartphone or tablet, the ipad, for all that it's annoying meets the criteria quite well.

It's a screen that you can move around easily.

[FrTown]

09:00 PM on 09/16/2010

I am not impressed.

[hypnotoad72]

10:30 AM on 09/17/2010

It's cute, but with the costs involved, the rest of us may as well stick with a 3D rendering tool and superimpose the image as a layer in even Photoshop Elements... never mind the full Photoshop application...

[digger0007]

08:40 PM on 09/16/2010

First of all, it is not a hologram so stop calling it that.

Second of all, it is not even true 3-D animation because it is not even an animated product.

What it is, is an interesting technique to use iPads to create stop-frame animation.

Typical new media news reporting by those without technical knowledge...over-hyped and full of errors.

[hypnotoad72]

10:26 AM on 09/17/2010

Great response, thank you!

[alexolife]

08:26 PM on 09/16/2010

OMG, a computer that can DISPLAY FLAT SHAPES on a SCREEN!

[studmoose]

10:15 PM on 09/18/2010

too funny (fanned)

[ItsAD]

07:26 PM on 09/16/2010

fake

[garystartswithg]

07:23 PM on 09/16/2010

Not a hologram -- you have to lie to push Ipads? Awesome.

[hypnotoad72]

10:26 AM on 09/17/2010

Not 'awesome'.

'Magical'.

[Wuud52]

07:04 PM on 09/16/2010

Neat, but not an iPad thing, just a pad or tablet thing. Can be done with any of the tens of pads coming out (once they are out of course).

[Madbunny]

01:43 PM on 09/20/2010

Correct. They could do it with a smartphone, the ipad isn't what deserves credit here, it's the artists that did the project.

[redmaple]

06:58 PM on 09/16/2010

This is not an hologram. Get your science right. Althought it's kind of cool. But nothing to do wih holography.

[Bolkonsky]

06:42 PM on 09/16/2010

What ? No 3d chess pieces battling each other ? Come on !

This is dumb, like all 3d. And so is fluff like gravilux and antograph.

We watched Mike Leigh's "kiss of death" on dvd yesterday. Lovely. Bunch of humans in a room.