A new type of Hologram

For avenue 5 season 2 I worked as VFX Supervisor for MISC/UNIT - The brief from the client was to create a on set hologram, that would attach to a watch (like an apple watch) and be constantly attached whilst moving to the persons wrist... the gag being that they couldnt get rid of it. It would also be subject to the interior rooms lighting and appear solid, like a mini human, and not like the classic blue "star wars hologram" with wavy lines through it. Additionally the holgram needed to occasionally glitch. 

We pitched numerous ideas on how it could do this from appearing as a liquid shimmer, to a colour prim shift, but the most well recieved idea was a polygonal refinement. where the hologram was very low poly to start with, and would refine to something more accurate, almost like a live subdividing mesh. 

we found and commissioned dimension studios to record the live scan footage, and then used houdini to recalibrate that as a low poly mesh. Dimension's set up is an incredible portable truck that we took on set, and shot the footage over 3 days with the actors performing their holographic sequences in a both surrounded by cameras - much like how photogrametry works.