This week was our first week working directly on the project. We spent the first half preparing for our proposal presentation. We discussed bringing in a hologram component into our project to fulfill our use case further in providing a novel experience to interact with 3D models. I contributed information on the slides related to this new addition and began coming up with requirements for this component. One of my main goals this week was to improve our explanation of our use cases; our TA gave good advice on thinking of our proposal as a business pitch, so I wanted to incorporate as many applications of our project in the presentation.
Going further on this, I began researching hologram pyramids. They are easy to create from everyday plastic items, but we decided to look into clear acrylic sheets in our first round of prototyping. I visited IDeATe and found a piece of acrylic, but by the time we wanted to use it, IDeATe was closed. I began by creating a model on SolidWorks and cutting it out as shown below.
Model of Initial Pyramid
Trial 1 Demo
However, this was a naive approach, as I didn’t consider any proportions of the sides or the angles involved. As a team, we found that the Pepper’s Ghost pyramid is a more accurate way to create the hologram, and I quickly remodeled and cut the plastic. Unfortunately, we still couldn’t achieve the desired outcome.
Trial 2 Demo
Even though the hologram becomes more relevant at the end of the project, it’s important that we start looking into it now. I wouldn’t say that I’m behind, but I do think that this does not require a lot of time and can be finished over the next two weeks. Over the next week, I hope to do more research into holographic illusions and see if there are either improvements or alternatives.