Manang Residency artist Chris Caines enlightened me about Gaussian splats. Splats are an efficient way of collecting 3D information. In exchange for a somewhat Impressionist effect, which may be an upside, you can capture an enormous amount of data through a standard phone camera and create a visualization with it.
One can record splats using Scaniverse. Unfortunately, you also need Scaniverse to view them, unless you clone this WebGL Gaussian splat viewer by antimatter15, hack at the code a bit,1 convert an exported .ply file to .splat using antimatter15’s converter, and upload the logic and assets to your server.
In that case, you can show your splats to the world via the internet. Behold. The subject is the painted ceiling of a public gate here in Ngawal, Nepal.
Controls are like a PC game—you can navigate using WASD and arrow keys and a mouse or trackpad. The touchscreen will work if you’re on your phone. Scaniverse makes interesting and often beautiful assumptions about the world outside the scan. These photographs are more representative.
Content at DMJ is free but paid subscribers keep it coming. They also have access to Dissident Muse Salons, discounts in the print shop, and Friend on the Road consultations. Please consider becoming one yourself and thank you for reading.
Our current title in the Asynchronous Studio Book Club is Art in America 1945-1970: Writings from the Age of Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, and Minimalism by Jed Perl. For more information, see the ASBC homepage.
The current exhibition in the Dissident Museum is David Curcio: The Point of the Needle.
In particular, you need to alter const url = new URL(params.get("url") || "train.splat", "https://huggingface.co/cakewalk/splat-data/resolve/main/", on or around line 746 to indicate your splat and domain, or localhost://whatever. The code author is using exceptions for flow control and I disapprove, but I appreciate not having to write this.
I'm wondering what the advantage is of using a 3D OpenGL capture vs a VR image capture, especially of you're not actually walking around the subject (or even then)? That said, the final result of the splatting is indeed interesting, almost like an old cardboard kaleidoscope, or maybe a pin-hole camera. Less accurate, but definitely dreamy.