ofxFern by EPFL CVLab

ofxFern is not only useful in face recognition. It can help recognise all sorts of patterns, which inspired me of using it in my previous idea of logo recognition.

ofxMSAPhysics by Memo Atken

ofxMSAPhysics is an opensource, C++ 3D particle/constraint based physics library for openFrameworks 006+ and Cinder. Its main feature includes particles, strings, attractions and collisions. It is quite cool to make Pixar-style animation and data visualization, while the basic elements like particles and strings need to be tweaked before use.

ofxTimeline

Timeline library is used for reusing pieces from those big box applications like Aftereffects, Fireworks. It will be extremely useful when you want to add those effects in audio and video projects. What is more, data visualization will also depend on this library.

HIIIIII

1. ofxSpeech – this is an addon for speech recognition and also speech synthesis. I haven’t tested it out, but I probably will for my addons assignment. The ability to recognize and generate speech is super powerful, and if it’s any good it should allow for an artificial intelligence to listen to you and make meaningful conversation. Actually, upon further brainstorming, I think I want to make my addons project be a robot that regenerates the same words that you say – like an echo but in a different voice – and I think if it’s loud enough and timed well I could throw people off so they lose track of what they were saying and have to stop talking. What fun!

2. ofxNameGen – this is an addon which generates names based on a seeded table. Something like this would be crucial if for example I made a procedurally generated game, or a series of procedurally generated characters, or if I wanted to become a famous rapper. (Did you know Childish Gambino got his name from a name generator?)

3. ofxBackground – this addon lets me separate the foreground of an image from a background, which could be utilized to give 3D effects to a 2D image. (Ie a perception of depth, especially for side scrolling). If this is really good, I’d love to see a game or installation which uses a set of locations and swaps out the background behind you in the image. Or we could delete the foreground and generate a level of a game based on the darkness or color of the background. I’d like to see some examples on youtube to see how good this is without having to plug it in and test it myself.

ofxAddons

ofxThinkgear

Now this is a cool idea. Thinkgear is a set of sensing hardware and software developed by Neurosky that can be used to take readings of the user’s mental activity. By extension, ofxThinkgear allows the user to connect a piece of Neurosky hardware to openFrameworks so that one can incorporate brain wave readings into a project.

The possible projects would be partially constrained by the available level of hardware–to my knowledge the practice of brainwave reading is stilla very inexact science–but even a simple neural interface would be an interesting input to work with. In fact, the main challenge beyond getting the technology to work would be to avoid making a piece that was only interesting for its novelty.

It could be interesting to develop a similar project to the projects that encourage their participants to stay very still–the user is subjected to a buzzing flurry of images and sounds until they relax their minds, at which point the surrounding environment becomes quiet and meditative. This could be accomplished by constructing an installation that simulates a busy, artificially sped-up area like a city that becomes calm and begins to reveal small secrets and treasures when one begins to relax. Another angle the project could take is that one can only progress and explore the area when their head is clear–otherwise all of the necessary details to move on become lost in the rush.

ofxPJControl

A projector’s a great base tool for large projects. ofxPJControl lets the user control a projector through a network.  There are already a lot of interesting projects that have been done with projectors but controlling a projector through a network would be an especially good tool for a crowd-sourcing interactive piece.

There are so many fun applications for a projector that I’m going to stick with listing potential setups rather than the specific projects that could be applied to each. A good base for a couple projects is a setup consisting of a projector, an open space, and a website that anyone passing by can contribute to. Mining internet data and projecting a representation real-time is another solid place to build from. It would also be a good way to share a performance piece or natural phenomenon across a large area–if combined with a GoPro one could share an experience like exploring a deserted city with a large, populated city for example. It would also be a good method for sharing an augmented reality with a large area–a projector on a spinning dias could sweep an area and change it as the light touches it.

There are plenty of ways for a projector to share an experience from far away. I’d love to explore a few of these ideas a bit more.

ofxKCTouchGUI

The multitouch screen is by this point a pretty solid technology that can be smoothly incorporated into most projects. I therefore think it would be most engaging to make projects with this kind of framework that serve only as an interface with a larger work. An iPad that controls a kinetic sculpture is one idea. A set of touch screens that each force their users to sacrifice parts of the project to conserve the whole is another. At this point I see this framework as a nice, smooth way for the users to interact with the piece but I’m sure given time I could find some more interesting uses for it.

ofxGreenScreen by underdoeg

link

I would like to able to hook up a green screen to a live video feed and replace certain colors with different types of imagery, possibly interactive. It would also be interesting to see if you could select multiple colors to be replaced with different images to create an ad hoc environment on screen.

ofxOpenSteer by underdoeg

link
link to Github

I’ve always found flocking and steering algorithms to be very interesting and very visually engaging. I think it might be interesting to overlay particles with flocking behaviors onto live video feeds, and enable the predator/prey pathing in such a way that the overlayed particles interact with whatever is currently on camera. Maybe they’ll flee from certain colors or motion or brightness, or maybe they could be attracted to light or motion.

ofxMSAFluid by Memo Akten

link
live demo

I actually saw this in action in my previous looking outwards post, and I’m glad I stumbled onto the actual add-on! I woould like to find a way to use some sort of touch screen-based fluid system in conjunction with the green screen add-on to project interactive fluids onto solid-colored surfaces. The camera of a tablet or smartphone could be used to view an environment while certain colors are green-screened out to become the interactive surface.

ofxFlickr ⇣

by robotconscience

An openFrameworks addon supporting the Flickr API. [view on Github]

Most people think of Flickr as primarily a social media tool, but I also like to think of it as an ever-expanding and virtually limitless source of data.  This addon looks like it still needs some work (compatibility with other operating systems and some additional features) but that’s what github is for, right?  I would be most interested in using this tool to pull down lots of images with similar keywords, especially landmarks (e.g. the Colosseum, Eiffel Tower, Cathedral of Learning).  From here, there’s surely a lot of cool image processing we could do to extract and combine information to form more complete depictions of these places.  If only we had some computer vision libraries…

ofxCv ⇣

by kylemcdonald

Alternative approach to interfacing with OpenCv from openFrameworks. [view on Github]

Oh look!  YES.  OpenCV is a great library for doing computer vision without having to reimplement it from scratch.  I would argue that it requires more of an understanding of computer vision than, say, faceOSC, to know what to use and when, but the upside is that it is much more open-ended in its possibilities and widely used in fields like robotics.  There are lots of other ofx addons that implement parts of openCV, but this one appears to do most of them.  I can imagine combining the SIFT / pose estimation features of openCV with the images acquired from Flickr to reconstruct common subjects in 3D, given enough images.  Technically, you really only need two to do one facade well, and every additional image just makes it better.  So what do we do when we have enough images to do a really good reconstruction?

ofxPolyvox ⇣

by kalwalt

a simple wrapper for polyvox lib, to make voxel meshes with a Minecraft style or as Marching cubes [view on Github]

Make it with voxels!  This is much more fun than just reconstructing things to be photorealistic.  Adjustable voxel sizes make the resolution scaleable.  My dream would be to make my own ofxMinecraft plugin to take the output of these voxel reconstructions and import them into a Minecraft world.  In the meantime, this alone could provide instructions to minecraft architects to build the structures manually.  If we imagine combining these three addons, we could create a tool where a server full of Minecraft players could search for a landmark, see it rendered in voxels as reconstructed from crowdsourced Flickr images, and then view each layer individually in order to build it digitally from the ground up.

(from Spyrobandi)