News
Media from the Half-Way Presentation | Dan | HMC | AardmanWe're very nearly there on deciding the final application of our half way experiments. We're currently edging (cautiously) towards producing two final products, although one will be very simple. The only thing holding us back from announcing our plans is signing off the use of particular Aardman properties.
While you wait, why not check out some of the footage from the presentation of the experiments.
Check out the Flickr pics (they're also available amongst the others in the Media Sandbox Pool.
Problems and Joys with Processing | Dan | HMC | AardmanProcessing's been out a lot recently…
Unfortunately we can't seem to get the Face Tracking C++ stuff into Processing, even though someone else has been kind enough to create a Processing Library for us. I think it's just instability with the latest version (as running simple Library commands throws up Memory errors), but we're just not sure.
Not too much worry though, cause Mike's Iris tracking in a whole different way.
So although Processing has been a little frustrating for our work, we have managed to use it successfully for someone else's project all together:
Both the lab and the project has been creating a great sense of camaraderie between the groups involved. And although we (Aardman and HMC) haven't been able to hang around the lab during the day, there's been a few evenings (quite sadly) hanging about, generally geekin', and getting sucked into other people's projects.
One of the most thought provoking has been Simon and Simon's work on swarming behavior. Inspired by this we couldn't help but put together some Processing sketches testing out some of those theories. Check out the results below (the 3dd one needs updating, excuse the poor encoding until it's done).
Kit's a Coming, Production Starting | Dan | HMC | AardmanIt’s time to put our production where our mouths are, as today production started down in the strange and wonderful workshops of HMC Interactive. Here's an update:
Digital Puppeteering
Within the first few days of research it was apparent that some clever people had already dedicated a decent amount of time to developing systems that transformed vocal audio into lip syncing processes. It was also apparent that even when these systems delivered this process successfully, the effect of delivering pure lip sync without any additional emotion or further physical communication left a very cold and unsatisfying experience.This brought us back to where we started, looking to human manipulation of a puppet, and a puppeteers ability to communicate emotion, to create a successful experience.
Some research around Aardman revealed an already vibrant research area around this subject. ‘Pre-vis’: the process of quickly testing animation styles and movements prior to lengthy and expensive 3d animation production, is a growing industry. This process is basically digital puppeteering for production purposes.
Aardman’s already briefly experimented with pre-vis systems, involving a combination of motion capture and puppeteering interfaces such as those used by animatronic puppeteers. One interesting outcome revealed how suited dancers were to the choreography needed, rather than the actors that usually take on that role.
Our implementation of a puppeteering system is an attempt to look at a more standardized and malleable interface to interact with. Two Lemar pads ( jazz mutant ) will be used to record and translate finger motions into movements of a CG puppet. The actual form of interaction is still being researched; Will a direct digital replacement for a puppeteer’s ‘cross sticks’ suffice? Or will more manageable and intuitive systems be possible?
Magic Mirror
With a large piece of one way mirror in transport as this article’s being written, the magic mirror’s existence creeps closer. Alongside the one way mirror is a machine vision camera, and a few large IR Lamps.The technology behind this hasn’t really changed much than originally proposed; Basically flood the area with IR light, and have a go at tracking the reflected light from peoples’ pupils. Early experiments revealed that a standard web cam just doesn’t deliver the performance needed, so to allow decent tracking we’ve had to upgrade and get in decent machine vision level cameras.
A conversation with Joanie down at the lab, to involve a few layers of mirrored glass has left our heads pondering. Is it possible to somehow target layers of mirror through linking polarised light from the projectors to layers of the mirror. This way a basic level of parallaxing depth could be created. Nice.
Hello world! | Korash | HMC | AardmanHi all and welcome to the HMC/Aardman Blog for Physical Cartooning
