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You Have to See This Amazing Hologram of Sheikh Zayed

To mark the 100th birthday of His Highness the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai-based production firm New Dimension Productions (NDP) showcased him giving one of his motivational speeches in the form of a digitized 3D hologram on Instagram.

Holograms are a new technology and take time to perfect, so the ultra-realistic reinvention was met with great applause by users online. Many who saw the clip praised the three dimensional rendering for how much it actually resembled His Highness.

The first of its kind in the region, the hologram accurately depicted the late Sheikh Zayed as a digitized, 3D model, which was the result of thorough research of Sheikh Zayed’s archive. To create the hologram, the team at NDP meticulously studied the tone of the UAE founding father’s voice, his facial expressions, and body gestures. According to a statement, remastering the audio was the real challenge, as “different sources of recordings had to be matched and synced.”

“The NDP team pushed the boundaries of 3D photo-realistic modeling and animation, compositing and Visual effects to a whole new level; bringing forth a hologram that can reflect the astonishing persona of His Highness”, said Hasan M. Hina, Co-Founder and CEO of NDP in a release. “It is also a tremendous honor to produce a hologram of H.H. on the occasion of the Year of Zayed, which gave us an additional motivation to perfect it” he added.

Despite being a relatively new technology, over the past couple of years, holograms have slowly been appearing in select music shows and expos. Last July, actor Jared Leto made a three dimensional appearance at San Diego’s Comic-Con to promote his new film. Meanwhile, in 2012 a life-size CGI-image of Tupac Shakur (who died in 1996) rapped alongside Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre at Coachella.

Click here to watch the full clip.

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