How it works
Mirage turns a real performance into a 4D Gaussian splat, a moment you can pause, orbit, and explore from any angle right in your browser. Here’s how it works, in plain English.
Picture millions of tiny, soft, colored blobs floating in space. Each one has a position, a size and shape, a color, and a level of transparency. Viewed from any angle, together they add up to a photographic image of the scene.
The computer draws the blobs from one camera’s point of view, compares that with the real photo, and adjusts every blob to shrink the difference. It repeats this thousands of times until the picture matches what every camera saw.
Polygon models are built from hard, flat faces. Splats handle hair, fabric, and skin the way a camera actually sees them.
Earlier “neural” methods looked great but took a long time to draw each frame. Splats render in real time, even in a phone’s browser.
A real moment, rebuilt from real footage, that you can move around inside.
A still photo is easy to turn into splats. A dancer is much harder. To capture motion, the scene has to change from one moment to the next, and there are three main ways to do that.
Build a separate 3D scene for every frame of video. It's simple, but it takes up a huge amount of storage, and the frames tend to flicker against each other.
Build one 3D scene and learn how to bend it over time. It's compact, but it has trouble with fast movement and with things that appear or disappear.
Make time part of every splat, so each one knows where it is, how it moves, and when it exists. Mirage is built on this approach.
We built every step ourselves, from the camera rig to the player in your browser.
A ring of 19 synchronized 4K cameras films the performance at 60 frames per second. A fast shutter keeps every frame sharp.
Our software figures out exactly where each camera is and lines up all the footage in time, down to a fraction of a frame.
We build the basic 3D shape first, then train millions of splats until they match what every camera saw. Faces and hands get extra attention, since that's where people look first.
Long performances are split into pieces that join seamlessly, then compressed and protected in our own streaming format.
Our player streams the performance to your browser or phone with synced audio, and you control the camera.
Most 3D capture is designed for still scenes. Ours is designed for performers.
Dancers don't hold still. We capture people in the middle of spins, kicks, and turns.
The places your eye goes first get the most detail, so expressions and gestures look real.
Performances play as one continuous take. The pieces hand off to each other while you watch, and you won't see the joins.
Performances stream in a protected format, so they can't simply be downloaded and reposted somewhere else.
Five short, hands-on explainers with interactive demos. No math needed, and you can start anywhere.
What a Gaussian splat is, how millions of them blend into one image, and how a computer learns them from photos.
BHow a still scene becomes a moving one, and the three main ways researchers do it.
CWhy we film with a ring of cameras, why their timing has to match to the millisecond, and why a fast shutter matters.
DWhy volumetric video is so large, how it gets small enough to stream, and how a long performance plays without breaks.
EWhat your phone or laptop does 60 times a second to turn millions of splats into the picture you see.
No. Everything you see is rebuilt from real camera footage of a real performance. Nothing is modeled, animated, or generated by hand.
With 360° video, you look around from one fixed spot. With Mirage, you move the camera itself. You can circle the performer, get up close, or find a new angle at any point.
No. Mirage plays in a regular web browser on your computer or phone.
Splats capture soft, real-world detail like hair, fabric, and skin that polygon models have trouble with, and they render fast enough to explore in real time.
No. Performances are streamed, not handed out as files. That protects the performers and creators behind them.
Longer performances, more creators, and even sharper detail on fast movement. Every new capture helps us improve.
Press play, then drag to move the camera around.