Friday 22 February 2013

Major: Interactive Video Experiments

Passed the rigorous task in finding the best method of creating an interactive projection mapped area.

Demonstration of various Kinect experiments over the past week:



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Demonstration of basic body gestures that change videos on the fly

-Left Arm Flexing
-Right Arm Flexing
-Right Hand Above Head
-Left Hand Above Head
-Left Knee Above Torso
-Right Knee Above Torso




Wednesday 20 February 2013

Major: Progress - Misc update 16-20th February



This is a technical post.

I've chosen the interactivity pathway because I want to create an experience that is simple but fully mastered.

I've had a strong push into understanding the Xbox Kinect tech during the last five days, corresponding with a ton of people, figuring out the technical side, and how this can be fully utilised with the experiments I've already done with projection mapping. I'm planning to spend the rest of the week fine-testing the Microsoft Kinect and putting more solidified concepts into a full demonstration video.

Laterally, I've established a solid idea of how the final product will be presented, and am still in the process of constructing concepts to utilise all of this.



Maya or After Effects was initially established as the primary method for constructing the environment but because of its limitations in the Kinect (they are limited to pre-keying motion capture, no real-time rendering is available) I've had to utilise a middleman. Unity3D acts as a bridge to import the rig model and environment assets easily from Maya and hook the Kinect to the model all in fully-rendered real-time. Creating the illusion of the three planes is already established without any hard manual tweaking at this point.




Primary objective is to
-Create a simple model and rig it to the Kinect bone structure.
-Create an interactive environment
-Render all in real-time

Optional Objectives are to
-Create a second or third rig for multiple people to interact with.
-Utilise physics
-Utilise particles/dynamics for further eye-candy
-Utilise a secondary / tertiary projector to remove distortion (unlikely)

Fail-safe objective is to:
-Create a fully animated environment
-Execute the illusion of three-dimensional space on three planes
-None or limited interaction available

Friday 15 February 2013

Major: Narrative Selection

3d Illusion

The most straight-forward method. A traditional narrative or environment showcase will be projected in the illusion of three-dimensions.


Initial Influence: http://vimeo.com/34025760



3d with real life elements
A branch off the 3d illusion. More limited in theme, but a stronger execution of the illusion.


Initial Influence: http://vimeo.com/19348564



Sculpture Mapping
A single real life element that is projected onto.
Dependant on model, can have a strong variety of projections, i.e a human face can be projected in many art-styles / a cat-looking sculpture can have projections that turn it into a cat/panther/tiger/lioness etc.
Will require creating a model from card/paper/3d-printer. Will need to think what the sculpture should be.



Initial Influence: http://vimeo.com/39697056



Music Visualisation
An environment or set of elements that Sync to the music - Why should it be done, How does it differ from normal visualisers. What will the end product be.



Initial Influence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Zv1fU9flSp8


Interactive Environment
Environment created with a camera for the viewer to dynamically alter or interact with the scene. Will need to think about how one can interact with it, how interactive should it be, How much time will it allocate to implement.


Initial Influences: http://vimeo.com/45417241
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwrNMhCm5_Q

Tuesday 12 February 2013

Major: Experiment III

A final experiment before I move on.

This was to test the following:
-Accurately project onto three connected planes - XY and Z
-Accurately move objects through the planes without obvious distortion
-Create realistic artificial shadows for object to give an illusion of depth
-Create artificial 3D Models with lighting depth and shadow using only Maya


Three planes, three boxes, and three scenes were composited-

A Cartoon Landscape
A Library
A Scene only created in Maya






Saturday 9 February 2013

Major: Pipeline and Further Experiments

The pipeline for this is going to be trickier, adding in the current CG pipeline in addition to:

-Use of a projector.
-Camera for recording.
-Sufficient distance between the projector and space for projection dimensions
-Mapping for the surface
-Distorting the images
-Compensating for loss of quality/sharpness for areas that are "stretched"
-Keeping the animation in sync (if I don't choose to instead create them all on one plane as opposed to multiple planes)

Regarding software tools- Experimenting with current Projection Mapping tools have been messy, so anything further will be easier if simply developed from After Effects and Photoshop

Experimenting with more complicated geometry








Friday 8 February 2013

Major: Revised Proposal.

Whilst still thinking about environment with a narrative, I've been experimenting with the idea of translating imagery onto real world objects, starting with crude paper-made cubes that have looping animations projected on its faces.



The animations are from searching "animated gifs" in Google
The software used to skew the images is LPMT


The revised proposal is to try and translate an environment that doesn't limit itself to be displayed on a monitor, rather pushes itself out into the real world.

Projected out of the box or monitor (A sort-of play on 'Thinking out of the Box'), The objects (Boxes as place-holders- but may develop into something with more complicated geometry) acts as real-life elements to a virtual environment.


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Update 8th February: Initial Inspiration.