Post by Deftware in Holocraft comments

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Yes holograms can be pressed into plastic but you'd have to make a negative of the hologram. Holocraft does not generate the animated circular ones like the one in the image above which uses the specular glints of reflected light as a means of animating the light as the record rotates, rather than producing a stereoscopic 3D effect - which is the intention of the holograms Holocraft generates.

The important thing to keep in mind is that the grooves formed by any metal dies pressed into the lacquer will need to have glossy smooth surface that results, to maximize the sharpness of the glinted light so it's not a blur along the groove (which produces a blurry hologram).

jonoaustin2 years ago

Ah thanks so much...any idea how the example you attached was created?

Deftware2 years ago (1 edit)

I don't know for a fact but it basically is just carving circles around the record (or impressioning them in) and offsetting their centers and radii to generate specular vertices. The 3D shape's rotation becomes automatic as the record rotates. It might be something as simple as just positioning the center of each vertice's circular groove where you want it to appear in 2D, which is to say that all of the circles are around the center of the vinyl and then you offset their centers to position their light glints in different places.

So for 4 points that are the corners of a square you would have four circles with matching radii and just offset their centers a bit. If you want a 1" square then you offset each one by 0.5" in the X/Y to represent the four corners. When you light that up you'll have four glints and when you spin the record the four glints will appear to rotate in-place.

EDIT: I'm not sure you need to vary the radii of the circles at all, it would change the apparent depth of the glints but I don't think it's necessary to produce the animated/rotating model effect.