The 3D Printed Pixel Collider

Sebastian Morales Prado says perceiving objects "in ways that they are not" has always been a source of fascination for him. A mechanical engineer, Morales says his 3D Pixel Collider, a 3D printed cube which displays different images depending on which angle it's viewed from, was inspired by ways he could visualize a distorted reality. The 3D Pixel Collider transforms a 2D image into a 3D printed cube on a lighted base which manipulates how the viewer is located. You can read the whole story here: http://3dprint.com/52075/3d-printed-pixel-collider/


Below is a photo of Morales' 3D Pixel Collider:
http://3dprint.com/wp-content/upload...l-Collider.jpg

I've read all the limited material I could find about this project. It's quite fascinating and I'd like to learn more. The big stumbling block is the programming aspect of Processing. I'm not a programmer and certainly not familiar enough with reverse-reading someone else's code to understand the algorithms.

I also attempted to understand the basic foundation, but the information provided regarding the translation of voxels also escapes my understanding. I understand the cartesian coordinate system well enough. Among the many programs to manage 3D models, editing, etc, one will find the Z-axis reference to be vertical in one and horizontal in another.

Can someone explain the basics along with providing a valid reference? As an example, I'd consider to have a simple image, perhaps that of a square frame in which the x-axis is left to right, while the y-axis is top to botton. In the second image, which one goes where? Does the x-axis remain left to right for the image, while the z-axis becomes the top to bottom? Is it the other way around?

I'm a little disappointed to find no real discussion anywhere about this project. It appears to be seriously creative and artistic and could be fun, especially if I could figure out the basics. I really have little hope to figure out the programming though!

fred