✨Convert Any Image into a Hologram

With Looking Glass Blocks you can now upload any 2D image and convert that into an awesome hologram to share, cast, or view on any internet connected device.

What images work best?

Photos with good contrast, high detail and lots of objects will come out great. Here are some examples of our favorites:

Uploading an image

Once you're signed in on https://blocks.glass, click the + in the top right corner. Then choose 3D Image from the create a hologram menu!

If you're brand new to Blocks you'll see a few other options to guide you through the platform.

After you've clicked 3D Image, drag and drop any supported image format onto the window, and you'll have a hologram within seconds!

Once you've got your image uploaded, it'll take a few seconds to convert.

Casting your hologram

To view your hologram in your Looking Glass, make sure you have Bridge 2.3 or later running on your computer and that your Looking Glass is connected to your computer in desktop mode. Once you've got that set up, click the cast button and you'll see your hologram in your Looking Glass! ✨

Editing your hologram

There are three options to edit your hologram, Depthiness, Focus, and Zoom

• Depthiness changes how much depth your photo has.

• Focus changes how it appears in a Looking Glass.

• Zoom changes how much your photo is zoomed in.

Downloading your hologram

You can download your hologram by clicking the Download Assets button on the edit, manage or hologram pages and choosing the RGB-D option. To view your downloaded hologram, you can open it in Looking Glass Studio.

Privacy settings

Toggle between:

• Public (anyone who visits your link will be able to see your hologram)

• Unlisted (only people you share your link with will be able to see your hologram)

• Private (no one but you will be able to see your hologram)

Convert with other AI tools — Distill Any Depth

While Looking Glass Blocks provides the easiest way to convert images to holograms, you can also create RGB-D images using other AI depth estimation tools and view them in Looking Glass Studio. Distill Any Depth is an excellent option for depth map generation with particularly good results for complex scenes.

Generate depth in Hugging Face

Hugging Face provides a user-friendly web interface, allowing you to upload your image and generate depth without any setup required. However, you'll have limited generations unless you have a paid account.

Access Distill Any Depth on Hugging Face directly via the embed below:

If the embed doesn't work, access Distill Any Depth here. If that deployment is down, there is an alternate deployment available here.

Once you have accessed the tool:

• Upload your image and select "Submit"

• The model will generate a high-quality depth map

• Download both the original image and the grayscale depth map

Generate depth locally

Alternately, you can install Distill Any Depth locally.

To start, set up a virtual environment (requires Python and Anaconda or Miniconda) and install the package, with dependencies, using this command:

# Create a new conda environment with Python 3.10
conda create -n distill-any-depth -y python=3.10

# Activate the created environment
conda activate distill-any-depth

# Install the required Python packages
pip install -r requirements.txt

# Navigate to the Detectron2 directory and install it
cd detectron2
pip install -e .

cd ..
pip install -e .

Then, run their helper script to run the model on an image:

# Run prediction on a single image using the helper script
source scripts/00_infer.sh
# or use bash
bash scripts/00_infer.sh

For more instructions, see the official GitHub repo.

Combine color and depth into one image

• Use any image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, or even online tools)

• Create a new canvas that's twice the width of your original image

• Place your original color image on the left side

• Place the grayscale depth map on the right side, as in the image below

• Save as a single PNG or JPG file

Load into Looking Glass Studio

• Open Looking Glass Studio

• Drag your RGB-D image into the application

• Select "RGB-D Photo" when prompted

• Adjust Depthiness and Focus settings to perfect your hologram

Which tool should you use?

• Looking Glass Blocks: Free and easy to use, providing automatic optimization and sharing

• Distill Any Depth: Excellent for complex scenes and highly accurate edges, but less user-friendly

All methods produce RGB-D images that can be viewed on your Looking Glass display, so choose based on your workflow preferences!