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Show HN: I built an animated 3D bookshelf for ebooks

263 pointsby mawise9 months ago

32 comments

vessenes9 months ago
Nice! Many, many years ago, when Shelfie was shutting down, I was imagining we might want VR bookshelves one day, and I convinced Brewster to store Sheflie's spine and cover images over at the archive. Might be worth reaching out to see if they still have them. Spine images are a little hard to get; they're not part of the Amazon API, for instance.
pelcg9 months ago
Not a bookshelf, but it reminds me of something that Stripe did something similar here which is equally as cool.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.stripe.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.stripe.com&#x2F;</a>
JoeDaDude9 months ago
Something very similar was done a while ago by Petar Gyurov:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petargyurov.com&#x2F;bookshelf&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;petargyurov.com&#x2F;bookshelf&#x2F;</a>
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cdrini9 months ago
Very cool! I love the animation. I worked on a similar interface inspired a while back for Open Library: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openlibrary.org&#x2F;explore" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;openlibrary.org&#x2F;explore</a> . You have to go to &quot;Settings &gt; Book style &gt; 3d-spine&quot; to enable the effect
zzimbler9 months ago
Super cool - reminds me of the Stripe press website <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.stripe.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;press.stripe.com&#x2F;</a>
hi_hi9 months ago
I do not own many leather-bound books, nor does my apartment smell of rich mahogony, but this gave me a wonderful idea for visualising what my many ebooks might look like through an AR or VR virtual library experience.
randomcatuser9 months ago
This is awesome!<p>If we want to extend this to be a whole virtual library, are there datasets that people know about for book covers?<p>One thing that would be cool is book <i>spine</i> datasets!
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cyanmagenta9 months ago
Looks great! One thing to consider would be adding some more specular lighting. Books in real life are shiny, and the render looks a bit flat.
abraae9 months ago
Looks great. Though while I love me some skeuomorphism, it goes too far when it is plainly detrimental to usability, which it is here - I have to crane my neck sideways to read the titles. In a virtual world, the books could be stacked horizontally so that the titles are readable with user head upright.
Aeolun9 months ago
You just… built exactly the thing I was working on. Except it looks better.<p>I’ve had this before, but I figured this project would be small and niche enough that it‘d never happen. Crazy shit.
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2OEH8eoCRo09 months ago
I&#x27;ve wanted something like this so that I can have a custom bookshelf behind me in teams calls. I was tempted to make one but had no clue where to find book spine artwork.
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Jemaclus9 months ago
I read almost exclusively on Kindle, and one of the downsides of an e-book library is that it&#x27;s not really browsable by your friends and family when they come over. I&#x27;ve long envisioned a movie poster-sized touch screen that shows my library almost exactly like this, so people can touch it, scroll through my library, and interact with books (ie, animate it sliding out and displaying the cover + description). When it&#x27;s not interacted with, it just looks like a painting on the wall.<p>I have zero idea how to pull this off, but I&#x27;d love to do it, and this visualization of the shelf is exactly what I had in mind!<p>Amazing job. I&#x27;m very impressed!
jorshman9 months ago
I can imagine this being used to design a better Goodreads UX where you can see your friends&#x27; libraries. Super cool!
bejd9 months ago
The thickness of the book being calculated from its page count is a really nice touch.
quirino9 months ago
Very cool!<p>I&#x27;ve wanted to build something similar to this for music. Some virtual environment where you can organize your albums on shelves and play them on a turntable.<p>You could even extend this so you have to walk to a store to buy new albums etc.
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foobarbecue9 months ago
Great. Back when quirky.com was a product idea site, I proposed a piece of furniture that would be a bookshelf for ebooks (large e-ink screen cabinet).
drumdance9 months ago
Nicely done. Years ago I had the idea of projecting my Kindle library onto the wall to look like a bookshelf. Stopped at the idea stage.
wccrawford9 months ago
Very nice! It&#x27;s a shame that Calibre doesn&#x27;t have pics of the book spines to work with on something like this.
hamza__nouali9 months ago
Nice idea and implementation, would love to see a live demo without having to install this on my machine.
1010089 months ago
Very nice. I can imagine a publisher website using something like this to promote their books.
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flykespice9 months ago
Here is a tip to attract users: Add screenshot(s) showing how your bookshelf looks like.
macshome9 months ago
I miss all the cool animations and loving touches like this in Apple’s iBooks.
wolfhumble9 months ago
Looks nice! What is the license for this project – I can&#x27;t find it on the project?<p>Thanks!
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westurner9 months ago
Digital Bookshelf screensavers for streaming boxes would be cool.
chadhutchins109 months ago
Brandon Sanderson ftw!
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chrisco2559 months ago
Is there a live demo or do we have to clone it to see it?
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GNOMES9 months ago
I wish Plex included something like this
roshankhan289 months ago
i would love if someone could create the same for the ps3 emulator games which run on emulator on my pc.
bufferoverflow9 months ago
Looks: nice<p>Usability: useless
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AdmiralAsshat9 months ago
How are the books sorted?
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nerfherder7779 months ago
Pretty cool!
dheera9 months ago
Reminds me of Microsoft Bob