The Art of the Looking Glass

Instructor: Jake E. Adams

Winter 2025 Course Curriculum

Terminology note: SDK- (Software Developer Kit) HoloPlay- (plug-in for the LKG display)

DAY 1- 3 HOURS

• Introductions + Display setup + Goals for the course + Depth & Clarity defined

• How the Looking Glass Display operates. The difference between holography and light fields.

• Sfumato, a brief history, and a tool for enhanced depth and clarity for the Looking Glass explained.

• Light-field and holography as a medium for expression (brief overview).

• Setting up the Holoplay SDK/plugin within the Unity Game Engine + Unity basics demo

DAY 2- 3 HOURS

• Sfumato in practice, how the old informs the new, almost 600 years later. Goals review.
• A demonstration of 2D asset import settings, implementing and refining the holo-capture
• 3D and 2D creations with Unity, Photoshop/Gimp, and post-processing

• Scene Composition, lighting basics, Animation, and Quilt capture

• How Looking Glass Blocks work – To share your volumetric creations.

DAY 3- 3 HOURS

• Brief review of Animation and Post-processing in Unity + Looking Glass Ideal settings.
• Demo of button input interaction. Make your work do something.

• Identifying proper frustum target placement and settings for 2D and 3D assets + motion
• Hand in your creations using Blocks, the holographic sharing application.

• Time for questions, answers, and live work session, and if time allows – Video Quilts

WHAT YOU NEED FOR THE WORKSHOP:

The curriculum is based on my several years of work creating the first digital holographic/light field comic book (holocomic). You will be learning from an abbreviated version of my International School of Holography class. Thus many items I hoped to squeeze in didn’t make the cut. Regardless, this workshop will prepare you for a whole new ecosystem of design and development.

The Looking-Glass display is mesmerizing and magical in person. By the end of the course, you will have an extremely unique artwork/interaction to show off in your portfolio.

Who should take the course:

3D artists, designers, film XR enthusiasts, game designers and emerging

tech hobbyists. game design/new media Students are also welcome. The Youth workshop is open to 6th graders and above.

Requirements:

HARDWARE:

1. A laptop/desktop that has a good graphics card 1080 gtx or higher, windows preferably but not required (windows is preferred). If you are using a Mac, make sure it is a Macbook pro that has Intel processing. M1 Macs are not supported.

2. Also, be sure to have at least 16GB ram. Intel 7 or higher.

3. A Looking Glass display, Use this discount here: Portrait display.

SOFTWARE:

Unity (personal) game engine, Blender or Autodesk Maya (although not completely required, blender is the free option). Looking Glass Studio. Looking Glass Bridge. + Photoshop/GIMP.

Installation and steps before you arrive:

UNITY 2022 LTS game engine: This tutorial covers the install steps mentioned below:

1. Sign up and get a Unity ID here

2. Then you will want to download Unity hub here--> Unity Hub

3. run the .exe installer and follow the prompts.

4. Once inside the Unity hub, you will be able to navigate to the install tab. Choose an editor that is LTS (long term support). Typically the year won't matter, but try to stay above 2020 installs.

5. When you decide on an installation you will then go through prompts to decide whether you will be able to make windows, macs, linux builds. Make sure you select them. In addition, you want to ensure you have Visual studio installed. It will give you the option to install it at the same step, check this too. An easier way to get started would be to follow along with this recorded Unity setup tutorial. (navigate to step 4)

6. After you follow that tutorial you should be ready to create in your Unity install.

7. Set up Looking Glass Bridge, Reach out to me if any questions arise prior to class at ja@valholo.com so that we can help.

Looking Glass Bridge setup:

In order for your Looking Glass to interact with your desktop and the Unity Game Engine you need to install Looking Glass Bridge, visit this link. (extra documentation here).

Looking Glass Studio Setup:

Navigate here for installation. Using it is fairly intuitive, and you won’t need to worry about it until you come to class, but feel free to play around with it, once you have the Looking Glass bridge deployed/set up on your device.

Optional pre-class setup-> Looking Glass Capture - Unity Plug-in:

If you are feeling extra courageous: Download the Unity Package we will be installing as a Plugin (Plugins are extra tools/capabilities) for the Unity game engine here. The link sends you to a set up tutorial that will guide you through the process.