Hey HN! LitiHolo (I'm the founder) already makes the Hologram Kit and Full-Color Hologram Kit. They let you make real laser holograms on an average desktop with self-developing film. But we want to do much more, and are working on a 3D Hologram Printer for making hologram portraits and images from digital 3D content.

I'm looking for feedback on what you would want to do with a 3D hologram printer. The plan is to start small (think Makerbot Cupcake), and incrementally get more advanced, so I'm trying to find early applications that would fit.

Thanks for your help!

Hi Paul, I'm a big fan of your work democratizing holography, and I love the idea of a small-scale hologram printer.

If you need any assistance with a Unity, Three.js (WebGL), or Shadertoy rendering engine, let me know. I'm the software lead for Project North Star (Open Source AR Headset), and I've done miscellaneous other exotic display integrations and calibrations (ie shadertoys for the Looking Glass Display and a few CAVEs).

My absolute dream would be to print HOEs (but I'm unsure those are within the limitations of digital holography). I imagine holograms bent into a cylinder (that can be viewed from any direction), followed by shiny (metallic) objects and far-field subjects will look the most striking.

Will the printer be "full-color" too? Countering the chromatic distortion effects of the holographic film sounds like a fun challenge.

Yes, might be interested in getting your assistance. Send an e-mail through the info (at) litiholo address, and mention you reached out on HN.

Anticipating the first printer will be single-color, just to keep it simple. Then as quick to color as the market will allow.

The printer holograms will be reflection holograms, so they have almost no chromatic issues. We've made many nice full-color holograms for commercial application. Can't wait to get it into more people's hands!

If I already have a setup for developing film, can I use the setup with bulk rolls of film? It looks like the self-developing plates have a lower premium than I expected (if it's really $4 per 3x5 plate), but if I'm going to make a lot of prints, the difference is still there (and film is cheaper than plates anyways).

We put all of our film on glass plates for the stability. We currently don't have a film-only option, because the success/quality for getting good holograms has not been as good.

Our film plates are pretty competitive when you consider you never need to buy, mix, or bother with chemicals and the whole wet process.

It's pretty sweet to just expose the holograms, and then view them immediately. Maybe get a box of the plates and test them out to see the difference.

Yeah, I was certainly expecting more than the $4 per plate implied by the prices I saw on your site. That's not much more than low quantity 40nm grain plates from hobbyist sites.

How do your plates handle humidity and temperature changes? I have no A/C so when I was last into holography I had to wait for the weather was just right before doing it.

Our plates should be fine, as long as the conditions are consistent during exposure.

Do your large 6x8 plates work with the full color hologram kit or does the latter have the weaker lasers?

Right now our full-color kits only handle 2"x3". We are planning to come out with a full-color 4"x5" upgrade in the near future, with stronger lasers.

However, all of our hologram film is full-color sensitive, including the 6"x8".

This is great, really grat. I’d love to try this with my kids. It’s probably a bit too expensive for me at the moment at 75 plus shipping (also I’m in europe), but at $50 I’d buy one.

As hologram technology gets more wide spread, the price will be able to come down.

Right now a <$100 Hologram Kit replaces what used to cost $1000's. So we're moving in the right direction!

On your site it says:

> These are real holograms, based on the physics that won a Nobel Prize, not some gimmick or reflection.

How does it work? How do you cope with vibration?

The unique self-developing hologram film captures the interference pattern of the laser light, which is the hologram.

The optical layout for our kits reduces the vibration issues by using single-beam setups.

I've actually made a hologram with one of our kits in a Starbucks on one of the tables there!

Holy cow! My hat's doffed to you sir. Good work! (Also your site strikes a nice balance between info and marketing.)

Thanks! The holograms are pretty cool too!

Your full-colour example is very impressive! I see several opportunities for currently impossible costume designs.

Personally, I’ve wanted something similar — but larger — for a long time. How big can these go? Could I, for example, take a poster-sized holographic photo of some woodland for my wall?

Or, for digital content, a wall-sized holographic galaxy image?

Our current hologram film size is 2"x3", 4"x5", and we just introduced 6"x8". So planning to start in those sizes, but it is theoretically possible you could tile them to get larger area.

Ultimately, it could be as large as you could make the film.

I've always liked the idea of "holographic windows" onto whatever you wanted. NYC skyline or woodlands.

If you're in NYC you can visit the holography lab -- Jason has created some truly life size stuff, the biggest I saw was about poster board sized, maybe 3 x 4 feet. They were not for sale, but he does commissions...

https://www.holographer.com/

EDIT This place advertises "analogue holograms in size of up to 1.2×0.8 meters"

http://geola.com/

Met Jason many years ago when the Museum of Holography was shutting down. Amazing that he is still there, although I think he was in a different location when we met.

Our 3D Hologram Printer is working to bring hologram-making like this to everyone!

http://geola.com/ in Lithuania have a "hologram printing as a service" that works quite well, check them out.

We are building a 3D Hologram Printer so that you can have that kind of technology right at home!

Or entrepreneurs could set up new businesses so that this is available easily and as common as a print shop.

One of my bucket list items is a visit to Holographic Studios [1] in NYC to get a custom portrait.

[1] https://www.holographer.com/

Yes, I lived in NYC for many years, and actually made hologram portraits in the basement of the old Museum of Holography off Canal Street.

One of our big pushes for the 3D Hologram Printer is to put this kind of technology into the hands of anyone.

Kind of like Makerbot did for 3D printing. We want to be the Makerbot of holograms!

Given the early Makerbots' reputation for quality, I hope the analogy isn't precise... ;)

Roger that! Trying to convey the concept, but the goal is certainly to outperform.

How many angles/slices/images/whatever you call them can you fit on a single film? What is the limiting factor? What limits the form factor size?

Right now targeting 48 angles/slices/images per hologram. Want to give a smooth "look around" feel.

Limited by the hardware/cost choices that get us good quality vs. reasonable cost.

Size of the holograms initially based on the hologram film that we already produce, which currently is 2"x3", 4"x5", and most recently 6"x8".

This is extremely interesting. What kind of SLM is that? As I'm sure you're aware 48 angles is unusually small for this kind of thing as most existing printers use (expensive) SLMs of at least XGA resolution, or 1024 horizontal angles; the limiting factor for resolution is generally the data pipeline and lighting setup rather than the printer hardware. But it sounds like you might be taking a radical approach.

ALso, are you targeting single or double parallax? Again the limiting factor there is usually software - there really needs to be a "Cura" of holography to properly democratize this (I am currently working on a Blender plugin, but that can't cover the entire scope).

Yes, we're taking a radical approach to make it something that can be more accessible. Kind of like the first Makerbot, but for holograms.

The SLM choice will be part of trying to get the right performance/cost mix.

The printer will probably be full-parallax capable, but we might lean more toward horizontal-parallax-only for most user cases, to simplify the image input requirements.

Awesome! However I am still awaiting the animated and 'floating' in mid-air holograms ... as a HUD in my flying car!

Yes, agreed!

Although I tell people that what we are doing currently with the Hologram Kits is helping to create the next generation of hologram engineers. So they can build what we dreamed of!

And a 3D Hologram Printer will get us one step closer.

I wonder, is it possible to create 2D holograms? That is, a sprite, or a hologram that looks the same no matter the angle?

My usecase would be a set of parentheses (as in XKCD #297 "These are your father's parentheses, elegant weapons for a more... civilized age"), or perhaps even dragon balls (the star formation are supposed to look the same no matter the viewing angle).

But I suspect that the interference pattern would in that case interfere with itself down to nothing.

In the general case, you can make a hologram that looks like anything from any angle (like play a movie as you walk past) - given a particular viewing distance, because at a different viewing distances you will see mixtures of different "frames" due to parallax.

I can't offhand reason out what "viewing distance distortion" would do in the specific case of making a 2d image "follow" you (might even cancel out!), but in any case it's not a big deal if the viewing distance is much larger than the hologram size.

Interestingly, there's a traditional optical solution to this problem as well: beer pump logos, which are often displayed behind a very convex lens which partially corrects for parallax distortion.

(Edit: you will not, however, be able to correct for rotation. The hologram can't possibly "know" what orientation your head is in, only where it is.)

Depending on the way the hologram is printed or created, the hologram recreates the full wavefront, so the hologram replays the image without needing to know how your head is oriented.

Will need to look up beer pump logos. Interesting.

Possible! If you make a 3D hologram of a 2D plane, it will still be 2D, but at a particular depth location.

This makes my head hurt to think about, though.

Would it be possible to use light-field cameras like Lytro as source material?

Yes, this would work well!

Might have a more narrow viewzone, because the light field from those is fairly narrow as I recall.

So it won't 'contract' (forshorten?/rotate?) if you move around it? That would be neat.

A traditional analog hologram of a real plane, like a table, would simply recreate the image of that object exactly. It would have parallax just like the real thing.

To engineer a hologram that makes some attempt at "following" you, you would either need an extremely elaborate multi-exposure analog setup with rails and shutters and god knows what, or a digital holographic printer, which is another (fascinating) kind of beast entirely. In the latter case you generate what you want the hologram to look like from every possible angle, which is your case is simply the same image with perspective (un)distortion.

The 3D Hologram Printer we are building does exactly that!

Should work, I think.

Is it feasible to do landscapes or is this more for macro distances?

Our current kits would not work for that, but the 3D Hologram Printer that we are building could make those.

The printer takes multiple images, each from a slightly different perspective (maybe 1 degree apart each), and then synthesizes them into the final hologram as a full 3D hologram image.

So could do landscapes, portraits, 3D computer graphics, etc.

Interesting, I will have to keep an eye out for that printer. I'd love to see something like that used on one of the iconic scenes in Yosemite. I'm currently riding out the pandemic at my place nearby so I'm thinking a lot about it.

That would be cool! Personal favorites would be Big Sur or NYC skyline.

Stay tuned on the LitiHolo site for hologram printer details as we get closer!

Probably not, it needs to be laser-illuminated.

For the current kits, you are correct. For the 3D Hologram Printer, we will be able to open it up a lot more.

Mildly interesting!

Thanks. I think hologram portraits are the next direction, but any ideas on what else would make it more interesting?

You could print many frames from a video, and then if you move them fast, you'll have the illusion of a holographic video.

That is very much how the hologram printer works! You take many images, each from a slightly different perspective (maybe every 1 degree), and the hologram synthesizes them into the full 3D image.

The other cool part is the holograms can have motion as a result.

So as you move the hologram back and forth is will move!

to the future!

I like where your head's at!