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

by mawiseon 8/12/2024, 5:53 PMwith 57 comments

by vesseneson 8/12/2024, 8:09 PM

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.

by pelcgon 8/12/2024, 9:58 PM

Not a bookshelf, but it reminds me of something that Stripe did something similar here which is equally as cool.

https://press.stripe.com/

by JoeDaDudeon 8/13/2024, 1:18 AM

Something very similar was done a while ago by Petar Gyurov:

https://petargyurov.com/bookshelf/

by cdrinion 8/12/2024, 9:44 PM

Very cool! I love the animation. I worked on a similar interface inspired a while back for Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/explore . You have to go to "Settings > Book style > 3d-spine" to enable the effect

by zzimbleron 8/12/2024, 9:40 PM

Super cool - reminds me of the Stripe press website https://press.stripe.com/

by hi_hion 8/12/2024, 10:56 PM

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.

by randomcatuseron 8/12/2024, 6:13 PM

This is awesome!

If we want to extend this to be a whole virtual library, are there datasets that people know about for book covers?

One thing that would be cool is book spine datasets!

by cyanmagentaon 8/12/2024, 7:46 PM

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.

by abraaeon 8/13/2024, 12:05 AM

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.

by Aeolunon 8/12/2024, 11:00 PM

You just… built exactly the thing I was working on. Except it looks better.

I’ve had this before, but I figured this project would be small and niche enough that it‘d never happen. Crazy shit.

by 2OEH8eoCRo0on 8/12/2024, 9:34 PM

I'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.

by Jemacluson 8/12/2024, 9:20 PM

I read almost exclusively on Kindle, and one of the downsides of an e-book library is that it's not really browsable by your friends and family when they come over. I'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's not interacted with, it just looks like a painting on the wall.

I have zero idea how to pull this off, but I'd love to do it, and this visualization of the shelf is exactly what I had in mind!

Amazing job. I'm very impressed!

by jorshmanon 8/13/2024, 2:15 PM

I can imagine this being used to design a better Goodreads UX where you can see your friends' libraries. Super cool!

by bejdon 8/13/2024, 2:22 PM

The thickness of the book being calculated from its page count is a really nice touch.

by quirinoon 8/12/2024, 6:22 PM

Very cool!

I'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.

You could even extend this so you have to walk to a store to buy new albums etc.

by foobarbecueon 8/12/2024, 10:19 PM

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).

by drumdanceon 8/16/2024, 1:54 PM

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.

by wccrawfordon 8/13/2024, 1:03 PM

Very nice! It's a shame that Calibre doesn't have pics of the book spines to work with on something like this.

by hamza__noualion 8/13/2024, 10:40 AM

Nice idea and implementation, would love to see a live demo without having to install this on my machine.

by 101008on 8/12/2024, 6:14 PM

Very nice. I can imagine a publisher website using something like this to promote their books.

by flykespiceon 8/13/2024, 2:27 PM

Here is a tip to attract users: Add screenshot(s) showing how your bookshelf looks like.

by macshomeon 8/12/2024, 10:21 PM

I miss all the cool animations and loving touches like this in Apple’s iBooks.

by wolfhumbleon 8/13/2024, 12:15 PM

Looks nice! What is the license for this project – I can't find it on the project?

Thanks!

by westurneron 8/12/2024, 8:23 PM

Digital Bookshelf screensavers for streaming boxes would be cool.

by chadhutchins10on 8/12/2024, 7:06 PM

Brandon Sanderson ftw!

by chrisco255on 8/12/2024, 7:05 PM

Is there a live demo or do we have to clone it to see it?

by GNOMESon 8/13/2024, 1:49 PM

I wish Plex included something like this

by roshankhan28on 8/13/2024, 7:34 AM

i would love if someone could create the same for the ps3 emulator games which run on emulator on my pc.

by bufferoverflowon 8/12/2024, 10:51 PM

Looks: nice

Usability: useless

by AdmiralAsshaton 8/12/2024, 6:15 PM

How are the books sorted?

by nerfherder777on 8/12/2024, 11:06 PM

Pretty cool!

by dheeraon 8/12/2024, 9:42 PM

Reminds me of Microsoft Bob