Radiohead Music Video by Capturing and Rendering 3D Data

Posted Jul 15, 2008 to Artistic Visualization by Nathan  /  5 responses

Radiohead Music Video by Capturing and Rendering 3D Data

Radiohead's most recent music video, House of Cards, was made entirely without cameras. Instead the setup involved a rotating scanner, lasers, and lots of 3D data. The music video is all of that 3D data rendered.

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Check out the "making of" video for a better explanation that I can provide. I like the part when they talk about distorting the data on purpose because, uh, well that's something we usually try not to do.

Here's the final result. There are some really beautiful scenes where the "camera" pans a landscape and it sorta blows away in a billowy wind like a house of cards.

[Thanks, Jason]

Replies

5 responses to "Radiohead Music Video by Capturing and Rendering 3D Data"
  • Jason
    Jul 15, 2008, 12:00 pm

    The project also allows users to download the data set so that users can create their own visualization:

    http://code.google.com/p/radiohead/downloads/list

  • Ed
    Jul 15, 2008, 4:11 pm

    The radiohead video reminds me of trying to watch a scrambled adult movie channel on my parents’ old cable box. At least, that’s what I’ve been told it looks like…

  • Tim
    Jul 16, 2008, 10:51 am

    if your geeky and into radiohead… an even better clip:

    http://www.vimeo.com/1109226

  • Greg J. Smith
    Jul 17, 2008, 11:30 am

    Mitchell Whitelaw posted some great commentary on this video yesterday.

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