Forget Tupac, check out this front yard "hologram"

Yep, the story is everywhere right now. Tupac performed at Coachella from beyond the grave in the form of a “hologram”. Most of you probably recognize what is going on pretty quickly though. This is the same Pepper’s Ghost trick we’ve seen several times already in concert performances from various virtual bands like the Gorillaz.

While reading this article explaining Pepper’s Ghost to the masses, we saw that they had found a true gem of a hack! [Kevin] was inspired by a trip to disney’s haunted mansion back in 2007. He came home and went to work building his own really cool back yard attraction that happened to include the same trick they are now using for imaginary performers. There are tons of pictures of the build and some nice notes along the way covering 2 years of operation and upgrades. It is an ancient trick, but we always love seeing a good build.

Comments

  1. plfx says:

    Disney’s “Haunted Mention”? Is that a reference with ghosts in it?

  2. Eddie says:

    Tupac had a Six-pac.

  3. Camerin says:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgRgEvRDw90

    Not a great video, not terrible technical, but it makes since. There wasn’t a good explanation in any of the links i looked at.

  4. lance says:

    “disney’s haunted mention”

    Mention? Mansion?

    …really?

  5. Camerin says:

    Also these things still fall in uncanny valley in my book. with a good back ground they could step out of it, but with out having a truly black background the illusion looks scary, the translucent appearance makes it look like there is a ghost there. Also with the lighting differences between the two stages…. looks creepy

  6. Gdogg says:

    I was there and it blew my mind when I saw him!

  7. Robot says:

    Who knew that thuged out suburban kids would have so much in common with Japanese anime fan boys?

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTXO7KGHtjI

    • iw2 says:

      Afaik, the Hatsune Miku version is a rear projection setup. You can easily see the two projectors behind the screen. They seem to be located at the bottom of the screen so that the crowd will not notice them. However, the camera that is located above their eye-level gets to see them which creates the hot-spot effect.

    • Kris Lee says:

      I do not know, can it get more weird? I mean this is not real, she can not see them.

  8. naturetm says:

    I was wondering how they did this! Thanks HaD. Thanks for putting “hologram” in quotes too. Marketing lies make me angry sometimes.

  9. Matz05 says:

    Impressive! And, as usual, the Japanese are ahead by playing CG video on false-hologram setups.
    I can see this kind of thing being great for concert effects, tele-lecturing, CG visual aids…

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