Sunil's Blog

With Jamario Moon being dealt away to Miami just last week, it seems fitting that I revisit an old project Paper-Robo and resurrect Paper Jamario Moon.

I finally got a chance to sit down and play with FlarToolkit. For those unfamiliar, FlarToolkit is a open source library that allows you to manipulate 3D objects using a pattern (like QR codes), a webcam and Flash.

Thanks to Mikko Haapoja and Saqoosha for some awesome start up guides:

http://www.mikkoh.com/blog/?p=182

http://saqoosha.net/en/flartoolkit/start-up-guide/

I had to jump through some Flex hoops to get through some of the demo examples to work. Apparently you can only use the following syntax in Flex to embed binary files:

“[Embed(source="../lib/mypattern.pat", mimeType="application/octet-stream")]”

Since I haven’t used Flex before (I use FDT), I got around embedding these camera calibration and pattern binary files by using loaders. If you are using loaders, be sure to add MIME types on your server for .dat and .pat files. Other than that I didn’t change the original source code too much, other than replacing the basic cube primitive with a collada model. I also threw in some animated MD2 quake models (Boba Fett and Starscream) for good measure.

Briefly to use this library you need two binary files, a calibration file “.dat” for a webcam and a pattern file “.pat” representing your printed pattern. You specify a desired accuracy, and using a detector class you can determine if the marker is FOV of the camera. If the marker is detected you add whatever 3D object you want to a Flarbasenode, which is a Papervision3D Display Object. The Flarbasenode can then be translated/rotated using information from the detector class.

Screenshot of Jamario Demo

Try it yourself:

Download and print pattern

Test the application here (Webcam required)

Here is some sample code and other resources to jump start your Augmented Reality project:

Here’s a good repo of free animated MD2 models Project:

http://polycount.com/models/quake2/

Sample Code:

http://www.mikkoh.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/learningflartoolkit.zip

http://www.boffswana.com/news/wp-content/uploads/augmentedreality/AR_dev_source.zip

Air application to make binary marker files:

http://saqoosha.net/lab/FLARToolKit/MarkerGenerator/MakerGenerator.air

Welcome to my first blog post, in the post-IMM era! Right after the IMM Open house and volunteering at FITC 2008 Toronto, I parachuted out of Toronto with my girlfriend for a much needed vacation to Paris (France not Ontario). I had a relaxing vacation away from my computer for 8 days.

While I enjoyed the wine, crepes with nutella and croissants, I also stumbled across something neat at the Adidas Store on the Champs-Elysées while I was there. They had what looked like a Gesture Tek installation right in the middle of the store, where you could design your own shoe. These kids ran up to the screen thinking it was a touch screen, a la iphone. They were clearly lacking the appropriate training required to operate such a display! Having come across Gesture Tek displays before in our multimedia pioneering class, I decided to put on a clinic. It was funny seeing people stop in their tracks while I created my own personalized Toronto Raptors sneaker, using a user interface that screamed Minority Report. After you create your shoe, you could save it in a gallery and walk over to a “virtual mirror” and see what it looks like on your foot. Unfortunately, the “virtual mirror” was broken, so I only got to play with the interface. Thank you to my wonderful girlfriend Kerrie who filmed me looking like a dork.

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I’m already thinking of ways to port this over to a Papervision 3D project using Dan Zen’s motion cursor classes as a user interface. You have already seen examples of the motion cursor classes used in Rock Revolution a project I built with my classmate Nick Poison. I don’t think motion cursors have been implemented with Papervision 3D yet, so hopefully I’ll come up with something neat.

Here’s is some of the stuff I’ve been working on during the last 8 months:

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It’s hard to present a completed portfolio while working on final year projects!

Here’s a quick and dirty list of some of the stuff I’ve been working on this past year in the Interactive Multimedia post-graduate program at Sheridan College.

Current Portfolio – work in progress

Projects:

Rock Revolution

- i made this game with Nick Poisson, a classmate from Interactive Multimedia at Sheridan

- motion capture game, with game play that is similar to Guitar Hero; a webcam is required, 3D glasses are optional!

Paper Robo Flash Application

- builder

- papervision3d, flash

- Paper-Robo is Flash application that allows users to design and build their own action figures. They are made from paper and have joints at the hips, knees, wrists and ankles.

Paper Robo Game

- Paper-Robo Game is Flash game. Jetfire has suffered major battle damage. Help him collect glue bottles for repairs, before his creator sends him to the recycling bin.

Starlight

- Flashlite, mobile prototype

- At arena concerts these days, holding up a lighter during slow songs has been replaced by glowing cell phone displays. How about turning a random sea of blue display lights from phones into something more meaningful like text or animations?

Sheridan College Library

- papervision3d, flash

- Interactive library tours and tutorials for the Sheridan Institute of Advanced Learning and Technology.

The Colbert Desktop – Adobe Air Application

- Marketing widget for “The Colbert Report.” The application aggregates rss feeds about recent clips and upcoming guests, has a shout box for users to post comments, and uses video with alpha channels to simulate a green screen mashup.

Social Media is media that encourages conversation, community, and collaborative content creation. This fits IMM’s mandate, which is to create interactive content beyond navigation.

Wayne MacPhail, is a social media consultant who gave a talk on Mashing Up Social Media and the DIY Community.

He presented Web 2.0 as a marketing term, which encompasses: community collaboration, shared content, single tasks, clean clear interface, tagging and social bookmarking.

Web 2.0 has also been referred to as the second bubble (the first being the Dot-Com bubble era of 1995-2001), where too many companies attempt to develop the same product without a business model.
I found this funny parody while researching Web 2.0: Here comes another bubble.

What is the target audience is of Twitter? I consider myself a tech geek, and I seem to have missed the Twitter bandwagon. I correlate Tweets to things like MSN personal messages or Facebook status updates, neither of which I have time to update.

You don’t use a social network, you become part of it:
A company can’t use a site like DIGG.com to promote their products. In order to get your content Dugg you must have a lot of Digg power, which comes from a high percentage of popular submissions. If a user tries to submit their own content, it’s usually buried by the community and labeled as blog spam.

Wayne presented us with a barrage of new Social Media services.

A global visualization of tweets using Google Maps.
http://twittervision.com/

Aggregates flakes of your existence from a variety of personal RSS feeds. It is a social life RSS feed that projects your footprint on the web.
http://jaiku.com/

Start your own live broadcast using content from around the web or your own webcam, and assemble a dream team of producers.
http://www.mogulus.com/

Sprout is the quick and easy way to build sophisticated multimedia content, including mini-sites, widgets, mashups…
http://sproutbuilder.com/

Share and discuss your news instantly.
http://www.utterz.com/

Stream live video fast to the world. Right from your phone.
http://qik.com/