farcar – FinalProject

‘AR Typography is a mobile app that delivers real-time text motion tracking to video…’

AR Typography                    

AR Typography places text anywhere based on a simple touch of the screen. Built on AR Core in Unity, people can place multiple layers of 3D text, each with their own unique content, into one environment. The text tracks changes in movement, and will maintain its position and rotation values when moving around.

How It Works                    

AR Typography is able to generate 3D text onto flat surfaces (including walls) by intercepting the point cloud data from AR core and creating independent tracking planes for each object at the point the screen was tapped. When tapping the screen, the app will project the active 3D point cloud data (active referring to points visible to the camera) onto a 2D surface and find the closest point to where the screen was touched. Iterating over the point cloud data, this point will find the next two closest point in order to find the best cross product that represents the orientation of the point. The point now contains information about the position and orientation that can be used to generate the text.

In an effort to be able to film shots better without interruptions, I have effectively removed the point cloud and tracking plane visualizations.

AR Typography loads multiple strings of text into a list upon startup. The active text will modulate over the list of strings and generate a text object with the contents of the active text. This allows for effective storage and placement of multiple pieces of text in one scene.

In order to create a 3D effect for the text, a white text layer is placed at position p with orientation r, and 15 additional iterations of black text is placed at position (p – (i+1)*k*r) and orientation r, where i is the index [0,14] and k is some constant.

Visual Development                    

The original sketch for the AR Typography application made using After Effects.
Initial text demo using Google AR Core’s ground-tracking
Using AR Core tracking planes to cycle through text on the ground
Creating an independent algorithm to generate text on individually-formed tracking planes
AR Core generative text on walls
Using pan techniques to create AR text montage
Adding additional support layers for 3D text feature using hard drop shadows

Rendering Environments                    

Building GameObjects in Unity [Using AR Core]
Scripting Environment using AR Core Documentation
Composing footage in After Effects

Final Product                    

AR Typography is a mobile app that delivers real-time text motion tracking to video, allowing for the creation of immersive, real-life kinetic typography videos for any videographer. To demonstrate this, I put together my own real-life kinetic typography video.

Far                    

In Collaboration With                    

AZScreenRecorder – Mobile Screen Capture

cmuTV – Found Footage

Carnegie Mellon – Logos, Branding, etc.

Friends of the Studio – For Being so Friendly

And to Viewers Like You : )