Table@Viz: Tabular data converted into 3D visualizations

What is the project about?

The goal of Table@Viz is to develop an easily accessible tool for data-driven storytelling. Data journalists and scientists often find it time-consumingto prepare complex data sets in a clear and understandable way, especially if they have little programming experience. By combining Blender, an open-source 3D platform, and the Python module Polars for GPU-accelerated data processing, common data formats such as CSV, Excel, or JSON can be imported directly into Blender and automatically converted into graphics, infographics, or animations. Table@Viz aims to enable socially relevant topics such as extreme weather events, election results, or geopolitical contexts to be presented clearly and visually, thereby supporting public discussion.

Which audience does the project address?

The project is aimed at data journalists, science communicators, and researchers who need new visualization workflows. Indirectly, the target audience consists of anyone who wants to better understand data with the help of visualizations.

What is to be achieved?

A new data processing module is to be developed for the open source visualization software Blender. This module will be able to handle a wide range of data types and will also feature a number of suitable geometry operations for further data processing, such as positioning text elements at predefined coordinates, applying color gradients based on a time series, and displaying nodes and edges of a network.