Real-time WebGL Rendering of House of Cards August 31, 2011
Posted by Andor Salga in Open Source, point cloud, webgl, XB PointStream.trackback
I was reading over the WebGL around the net roundup this week when I saw Mikko Haapoja’s rendering of a frame of Radiohead’s House of Cards. I thought this was neat and wondered if I could render the frames in real-time using XB PointStream.
CSV Parser
First I downloaded the House of Cards data and saw it was in CSV format. XB PointStream already has the architecture setup for user-defined parsers, so I was able to write one without changing the library itself.
User-defined Shader
To make things interesting I wrote a simple shader which changes the positions of the points and colors while the video plays. Again, I didn’t need to change the library since user-defined shaders are supported as well.
Performance Issues
When I first began rendering the video, I was using a MacBookPro 3.1 (2Ghz, 2GB RAM, GeForce 8600M GT 128MB), but Firefox began chugging after about 400 frames. Luckily my supervisor (Cathy Leung) saved me by giving me a new MBP 8.2 (2GHz, 8GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256MB). With this new system I was able to render it in real-time without any major issues.
There are 2100 frames of Thom Yorke singing which totals 880MB, so you can’t stream it online :c However, I’ll place all my work on Github if you’d like to tinker with it. Keep an eye on my blog when I make it available.
Say Hi to Cathy… I think she was one of the best profs at Seneca. I wish I still had her notes from DSA. HAHAH… Would be useful now.
You should try looking at the other datasets in the radiohead data set. The ones of Thom’s face are probably the most low res.
I love it