Category Archives: LO-1

John Choi

14 Jan 2015

QUMA, by SoftEther, Japan. 2011.

Basically, this is a device sold by a small company in Japan that allows for easy posing of humanoid figures in 3D applications.  In essence, it is a mannequin that plugs directly into your computer and sends data on the angles of every joint.  This project inspires me because I want to build one!  About the posability aspect, one the back is somewhat of a limitation (It appears to wearing some kind of “backpack”).  I’m not sure how well other humanoids with different proportions would work, but I guess that is something we’ll have to see.  Critically, though, this is just the beginning of something cooler.  Although this fits the bill exactly as they described on their product page, I think this needs some really cool interactive software to go with it.  A video game console isn’t anything without the video game.  Perhaps something like controlling giant virtual robots in real time, just like in Pacific Rim?

Input Puppets, by Interactive Geometry Lab at ETH Zurich. 2014.

This project is very similar to the other project I found above, save for one small difference:  with this experimental device, you can create whatever jointed posable figure you wish!  The pieces are modular, meaning that posable figures are not limited to humanoids.  We can pose elephants, dragons, snakes, and even octopi.  This thing has potential to be used in a variety of cool applications, and what we’re seeing in the video is just scratches the surface.  To improve this project, it needs some awesome software to go along with it. How about building a giant virtual robot and THEN controlling it?  Seriously though, the joints have no customizable limitations, save for the blockages at +/- 90 degrees.  This is a good thing and a bad thing.  While it allows more freedom, if used improperly, some pretty weird animations can result.

mmontenegro

14 Jan 2015

I was doing some research for my ETC semester project which involves a motion capture when i came across the two projects I am going to discus.

Map Visibility Estimation For Marge-Scale Dynamic 3D Reconstruction:

This project is tracking movement and then generating the movement path of the objects dynamically. Markers are attached to the objects that what to be tracked so the motion capture cameras can see them and human joints are tracked automatically similar to how the Microsoft Kinect does it. It is a research project here at CMU with its main focus on creating more accurate motion detection by optimal camera detection. In other words, selecting the right cameras for each point (in a very small nutshell).  It was done byHanbyul Joo, Hyun Soo Park, and Yaser Sheikh. I founded this project very inspiring because all the raw data of movement creates beautiful color patterns and shapes and because it solved almost all the issues the Kinect has to encounter when tracking humans. I feel that a very cool installation could be created with this type of technology because the entire human body is being tracked in a 3D cube/space. this would allow for a completely immersive tracking experience!

After finding this project, i decided to try to see what else similar to this is out there and I found this:

NuFormer – Virtual Reality-Video Projection:

This project is trying to combine virtual reality with motion capture to fully engage the user in the experience. apart from this, it generates a projection of the user in the virtual space to show to the audience what he/she is seeing and experiencing. This type of experiences are being explored to look for more possibilities of how far we can push VR and full our brain. This one was made by NuFormer. I really liked the concept of combining virtual reality with motion capture, this is probably what we are going to end up doing in my ETC project, but I feel this project was just a proof of concept. I didn’t find the experience that engaging, yes the art is nice, but with so that power, something more creative would have been better. Something that would really make the user be in the edge!