One of the most convenient ways to create 3D scans is using the Polycam smartphone app. Their community-driven Explore page also offers a wide variety of highly detailed 3D scan models. Most of these 3D scan models can be exported as OBJ/MTL or glTF formats and viewed using HoloGold. The app charges a monthly/annual subscription fee once the free trial period expires.
If you're instead looking for a free route to create 3D scans, there are open-source desktop application alternatives such as Meshroom, but the software requires a reasonably powerful GPU to be usable.
There are other resources such as TurboSquid, Sketchfab or Free3D for downloading 3D models, but the exported OBJ/MTL formats (especially free models) may have some inconsistencies, which would need to be corrected by the user manually.
If you are running HoloGold on a laptop with a built-in webcam, you do not need to purchase one.
If you need to buy a webcam, we recommend purchasing a webcam that runs at 60 FPS (frames per second) and has a wide vision lens to maximize the view box. (e.g. NexiGo N980P 1080P 60FPS)
HoloGold does not store or send any captured frames from webcams to a remote server. All captured frames are locally processed for facial feature landmark estimation and discarded instantly frame by frame by the webcam server application that runs locally on your computer.
The server application relies on two libraries: OpenCV and Google's MediaPipe. Google's MediaPipe terms of service state that all processing happens locally and the data will not be sent to any remote server.
Make sure that the display profile and the webcam position are configured correctly. Then, re-run calibration (tilt, depth and offset).
For tilt calibration, it'll be helpful to use a small box-shaped object horizontally leveled with the center of the lens to adjust the angle of the webcam.
For depth calibration, make sure that your head is not tilted sideways.
For offset calibration, it'll be again helpful to use a small box-shaped object aligned with the center reference line. Before running the offset calibration, make sure that the webcam position parameters are set appropriately. For example, if the lens of the webcam is 3cm above the top center of the screen, the Y position parameter should be set to 3cm before running the offset calibration.
Once the webcam is properly calibrated, you can skip most of the webcam calibration procedure after changing the display device.
After mounting the webcam at the top center of the new display device, redo the tilt calibration only.
Try lowering the display resolution of the monitor. In most cases, this will have the biggest impact on improving the frame rate (especially true for 4K+ monitors).
Keeping CPU/RAM hungry applications (e.g., web browsers like Chrome) open in the background will also slow down the FPS.
If possible, try to keep the polygon count to less than half a million for improved responsiveness by reducing the polygon count via re-meshing the model or removing background polygons.
The displayed frames could seem a bit shaky if you're using large monitors or TVs. To mitigate the shakiness, try increasing the Smoothing parameter on the HoloGold Webcam Server application. Smoothing will stabilize the shaky frames, but there will be a trade-off between frame stability and eyetracking responsiveness.
HoloGold does not use GPU for rendering. All rendering is CPU-based so upgrading the GPU will probably not affect the performance.
Turn on the Show Axis (Hotkey: X) and Retain on State options before displaying the 3D hologram model.
Once the hologram is projected on the screen, use the following keys to control the camera while viewing the hologram:
The blue XY reference plane (enabled by Show Axis or with the hot key "X" during display) is the "screen window" that will always remain stationary. The part of the model will in front of the XY plane screen (towards the viewer) will "pop out" of the screen.
The origin of the reference axes (the point where the three red/green/blue planes intersect) positioned near the spot for the viewer to focus on.
After setting the camera position and angle, exit the hologram view mode, and save the retained state (Retain on State must be enabled) inside the OBJ folder for auto-loading the camera configuration next time the model is loaded.
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