The first step was to do a lot of planning. How big should it be? What do I need to build it? How am I going to do something like this when I don’t know anything about the technology? Well, I decided to go ahead with it based on the list of parts that were in that tutorial plus a couple things of my own.

Once all of the parts were ordered, I decided to spec out and start building the box to house the screen and eventually the projector. Here are a couple pictures of the construction process.

Once that was built enough for me to start on the electrical aspects of the screen (and once all the parts arrived), I started on that. Cut out the corners of my acrylic and struggled with my first ever electrical circuit. Mounted the lasers in some air-drying clay and plugged it in. It worked on the first test (with a lot of little adjustments) and I have the following video to show you my first test.

There is still a lot to do with the setup, including adding the projector and a screen to touch, but it is on its way and I am very happy with it thus far. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks.

thanks, marc

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I quickly realized that I don’t have enough time to make this thing on my own, but being stubborn, I tried anyways. Well, I haven’t had time to even really think about it for over a month now but would like to get back at it.

What I have decided to do is to try and create a team of 3 or 4 developers to try and get this this off the ground and working, because I really feel that it would be a benefit to the Flash community. If you would like to help out, I am looking for a couple people that have experience in both Flex and Papervision.

Here are some of the areas that we need some specific help with :
Interface Design
Flex Development
Papervision Development

If you are interested, you can check out www.paper-face.com to see the app and email me at marc@marcpelland.com and we can get going on this. One thing to note is that there is no compensation for the work done on this project but I would like all involved to take it seriously. It will be a good learning experience and hopefully a helpful tool for the industry.

thanks,
Marc Pelland

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• Overview
• Setup
• Create Your First Project with Augmented Reality
• Optimize and Customize the Settings
• Tutorial Files
• Finished Scene

Overview

What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented Reality is a technology that allows you to superimpose images into real-time environments. For the purposes of this tutorial, you just need to know that it reads a marker (shape/symbol), interprets the angle and size of that marker and then allows you to place objects at that size and position on the screen (or whatever your medium is).

Here are a couple example videos:

Mini Video and the GE Site

What is FLARToolKit?

To start with ARToolKit is the development package that has allowed developers to tap into the power of Augmented Reality. FLARToolKit is an Actionscript 3 port of the Java version of the toolkit.

What do I need for this tutorial?

In this tutorial, we are going to use FLAR Manager, which is a framework setup to make the combination of Papervision 3D and FLARToolKit easy and quick to setup/use.

If you would like to simply use FLARToolKit (or just get a little more information about it) clik on the following link: http://www.libspark.org/wiki/saqoosha/FLARToolKit/en

Otherwise, download FLARManager (using v0.1 in this tutorial) from http://words.transmote.com/wp/20090309/flarmanager-v01/ . FLARManager actually comes with a build of FLARToolKit in it and you can get it for AS3/FP9 or AS3/FP10 (we are using FP10).

You will also need FlashDevelop or another Actionscript editing tool. In this tutorial I am going to be compiling my code directly from FlashDevelop, but feel free to use the compiler/method of your choice.

You should also get a pattern generator so that you can create your own patterns (markers). Go here for more details: http://www.squidder.com/2009/03/05/for-nerds-only-custom-flar-markers-explained/

What else should I know?

You should be aware of the fact that there is a licensing fee to use check here: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/license.html for more details.

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After all of the tests and playing around that I have done with face/motion detection in Flash and Processing Quasimondo posted an optimized version of the OpenCV port to AS3. This is something that I have been waiting for someone to do for quite some time. I thought I would just post my first test with it and forward you to his page since anything i would say about it would just be repetition.

To view my test click here (need a webcam): www.marcpelland.com/opencv

In my example, I just slightly modified Mario’s class to allow for an image to be placed instead of just a box being drawn. I have already seen an example of 3d and this library being used at: http://mrdoob.com/blog/post/643

Quasimondo’s blog posting: http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000687.php

thanks, marc

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PaperFace is a graphical user interface for Papervision 3D. The goal of the app is to build out 3d scenes without the need to write all the initial code. I am hoping to build it to a state where designers can come in and build a fairly complete scene and export the code to someone that can do something with it. Please go register and tell me what you think. Check out the forum on the site, and post any feedback you may have.

The app is no-where near completion, but I thought it would be good to get some thoughts on it throughout the course of development. Plus, now that it is live it puts a little bit of extra pressure on me to work more on it.

the address is www.paper-face.com

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Last week I was able to find some time for playing with a couple of the libraries that interest me in order to see what they can do. I grabbed the OpenCV Processing library and a couple others and started playing with my video camera. I don’t know if the issues that I had are related to the fact that I am on a Macbook Pro with Windows Vista on it but for the life of me I couldn’t get my webcam to work with the OpenCV capture methods. But I managed to get it up and running with a different library and then grabbed the incoming image with OpenCV to process it.

Take a look and let me know what you think: www.marcpelland.com/application.windows.zip (you need a webcam). It isn’t much, but it was good to finally get in there and write some code in Processing. I don’t really know if I am going to pursue this much further after discovering that I cannot access the webcam VIA a java applet. If there is anyone out there with more java / processing experience that may have a way to use this type of app online I would be very greatful.

thanks, marc

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Last night (and a little over lunch today) I threw a couple quick experiments together to see what it would look like, and I think that I might try this out with the video when I got home tonight.

The first example comes in the form of a basic color picker that lets you select the color of a pixel from within the image (on the top left). Once you have selected a color, use the slider on the right to control the threshold.

The second example is very similar to the first, it just uses a different sampling method for the color that it is going to use with the threshold. To try this tool, draw a box (from top left to bottom right) over the region of the image where you would like to get your sampling from.

This was a very quick and dirty experiment to see what I could get out of a bitmap with some basic functions, so please forgive my source. I will post more once I get it cleaned up tonight and start trying to work it into my motion detection application.

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You may have seen the video of head tracking using the Nintendo Wii. That video inspired me to try my hand at the same concept using Flash, Papervision 3d, and my newly discovered love for trying to get motion tracking / facial recognition into Flash.

As such, I have created this example which is my first step in creating some sort of tracking interaction with a 3d scene. if you would care to see a little bit more detail about what is going on, hit X to see the video and W to see the framerate. Stay tuned for more updates as I update the tracking code. Once again, I will post the source when it is a little further along.

** please note that you require a webcam to take advantage of the motion tracking, if you do not have a camera the scene’s camera is simply controlled by the mouse.

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I have a couple of uses planned for this and will post them when they are done but here is the first iteration.

With the help of a diff equation from Forrest Briggs, I managed to capture the specific area of movement within the webcam frame. I will continue working and post source once it is complete. This little project is helping me understand the workings of the bitmap data objects in as3.

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