Did you hear about Radiohead? The band was making a new video, but they weren't using any cameras,
just lasers and data. As you might imagine, we were intrigued.
The
song is called “House of Cards,” from Radiohead’s
recent “In Rainbows” album. In this new video, there were
no cameras on set. Instead, two scanning technologies were used to
capture 3D images. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produced structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne LIDAR
system that uses multiple lasers was used to capture large environments
such as landscapes. In the video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a
360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Whether
you're a music fan or a developer (or both), we agreed with the band
that it would be great to give you a deeper look into how all of this
was done, and even a chance to play with the data yourself, under a
license that allows remixing.
You can view the video, watch a
short documentary about how it was made, interact with the video in 3D,
download some of the data, and download an iGoogle theme and gadget -
all at http://code.google.com/radiohead.
- Sarayu