Earlier this week I saw a reel of a homemade hologram projector with magnatiles. I thought this was cool enough to try at home with the kids, but I didn’t want to be limited to what I found on YouTube.
So I (Opus) built HoloPath, a free, browser-based tool that takes any image, GIF, or video and turns it into an animated hologram ready for projection.
There are two parts to this project: the hologram generation and the magnatile build.
1 - HoloPath
I didn’t want to be limited to the holograms I found on YouTube, so I had Claude stand up a client-side conversion pipeline. You upload an image and it runs through a 13-stage rendering pipeline: scan lines, glow, chromatic aberration, flicker, glitch effects, noise... Basically you can generate Princess Leia asking Obi Wan for help.
Then it composites the output into the correct layout for your display hardware. Everything runs in your browser. I thought the client-side GIF editing was especially cool! Five layout formats are supported: 4-sided pyramid (360°), 3-sided showcase, LED hologram fan, Pepper’s Ghost, and single image output.
For the example below I used Pepper’s Ghost (45 degree screens), and you can see the original goldfish gif + converted edge detection hologram.
Try it free: https://holopath.art
And of course the source code is here: https://github.com/thekensman/holopath
2 -The Build
Now for the part I could do with the kids!
I’ll be honest we couldn’t for the life of me get the middle square tile to stand up the way the guy in the example video did. Everything is easier in the demo, right?
My 4-year-old daughter actually gave me some inspiration for a new way to get the tile to “stick” using the larger triangle pieces!
We modified the build slightly and we’re in business! (Check the pictures below for the steps)
The translucent panels work surprisingly well as reflectors — you can see the holographic image floating in the middle of the tile structure.
And it looks a lot cooler in the dark:
If you have kids with MagnaTiles lying around, this is a fun weekend project. Build the base, generate a hologram GIF on your phone, play it full-screen, and set the phone on top.
OR
If you have a legit hologram projector (or even a pyramid adapter that you can set on a phone) I’d love to see what you come up with!