Popout

I'm a long walks person. To me there's nothing more enjoyable than stroll around the town, get lost, and absorb everything I see. Taking photos, writing notes, talking to strangers even just a few words, looking into the sky, or just standing at an intersection and waiting for something to happen. It is a way for me to pop out into the real world, leaving screens behind.

Popout!

In 2025 there has been a great progress in generative visual models, that converted a simple photo into a full 3d model. The novelty of this transformation felt very very magical. Now on my walks, instead of just taking a photo I started collecting interesting objects and had the AI convert them to "fake" 3d representations.

Sort of Pokemon Go for your curiosities without staring into the screen 24/7.

This initial test was encouraging. So easy, retaining the magical feeling of "remixing reality."

Through several iterations of calling the project "toybox" (where you can play with your collection as if they were toys) and "shelf" (focused on items with meaning find around your house), I've kept the original intent of getting you out of your house to see the world, hence Popout (out of your house, and the flat photo into 3d).

I set up a custom workflow of photo upload -> OCR (whats in the image and where on the image, pixel coords) -> send to 3d (create representation from 3 sides) -> output the 3d model. Surprisingly this whole process per generation was fairly cheap (~$0.02 per model).

The challenge came in during demos, where all suggestions said: "this would be great for making 3d models for games / or simple 3d products like sneakers." While a solid utility, the companies producing the models for 3d models, had the same idea and were just much better equipped at delivering more meaningful product.

I still like the idea of walking and collecting into my bag, and having that as a way for others to get to know me (what do I find interesting; what items have meaning to me). While on ice, Popout is something I might come back to.