augmented.org

The cool Henry Selick, who brought us stop motion classics like The Nightmare before Christmas, gave us another shaking with its great Coraline stop-motion-mimic-3D movie. This movie launched a while ago, but I just remembered the cool advertisment, I’ve seen for it. I don’t wanna spoil if you still haven’t seen the movie (do it! ;-)), but the parallel world with buttoned eyes might have come to your attention nevertheless. So, what a perfect idea to just sew buttons on every passers-by’s eyes in the street?! Real scary!!! If you walk passed at night and all of a sudden…

See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOrAaCnkBeg and here.

And for the blu-ray/DVD-release of the movie (last week), there is a neat little website launched, that uses augmented reality, too. My nice fellow-Bavarians from metaio realised a pretty looking 3D garden, using their feature-based tracking flavour of their product running in your browser. It’s (currently) much more beautiful than Papervision, etc. (sorry), but there is a drawback: you need to install another plug-in (which took like 3 times to install it properly, sorry). But then again a funny show, that could use some content/story-telling in the future. Dear movie companies, if you resort to AR for ads, please think of us tech-nerds: we need something more than just a 3D model popping up and showing the trailer. Otherwise we will get bored. We’ve seen it. ;-) But that’s just a minority speaking. I’m lovin’ the spread of AR!

The staff from German company UrbanScreen have created a fantastic projection onto the Galerie der Gegenwart building in Hamburg. The technology is not the stunning part no more for us technophiles, but the really great thing is the choreography and play of building elements, movements, animations and the sound. It’s just a great piece of art, that just happens to use augmented reality. All the props! Thanks to art director Daniel Rossa. Be sure to go there, if you are around the fish-loving, wind-blowing Northern German metropolis.

See it on youtube here.

The gyus from the MIT present a new stunning way to hide markers and barcodes inside tiny pinholes (yes! the small hole next to the old fashioned markers on the left!). When you compare its size with regular markers, it’s pretty amazing and scary, how good they can hide technology to the human eye, but still obtain information visually. A small prism lens is fixed in front of the pattern and an “out-of-focus camera” will deliver the pattern in-focus, inside of the bokeh effect of your lense! It’s damn clever. Their demo for augmented reality tracking works amazingly good. Gotta see it on a field test, though. I guess even for the people at the MIT it’s still pretty hard to track a 12 Megapixel SLR image in real-time and some other restrictions are there (e.g. it’s always more effort and costly to glue a tiny lenslet behind your paperhole - instead of just printing a pattern…) But hopes are up! :-) Be sure to check it out at the Siggraph 09!

See it at youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG7vXI1I1wg

Canon shows another concept of HMD glasses at the Industrial Virtual Reality Expo. Well, actually, those are hand-held glasses, that are pretty damn bulky. But the tracking is stable (dinosaurs and copier seem to be tracked through markers, although you can see the silver ART infrared balls on some of the HMDs) and worth a look is their keying for the copier scenario: ugly on the edges, but it’s pretty nice, considering no special background color. Have a look here at youtube:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2NIX7DNpvk&feature=player_embedded

Some light-weight OLED+camera glasses would be neat, Canon! Maybe, you could cooperate with Ray Ban. :-)

Hey everybody,

during this rainy summer I figured, there could be the perfect moment for you to get started with augmented reality, too! You have seen the demos on youtube? You were intrigued by movie effects? But how could you try it out easily and - for now - without any skills in augmented reality or programming? Here is the answer below! Try it out! All you need is a neat webcam or even a crappy one and then try one or all of the following demos to get a first impression yourself! No movie, but all real-time in your hands!

1. Transform yourself!

Go to www.weareautobots.com and install the plug-in, when asked. After some loading you will see your webcam image as a live feed in your browser and when you keep your face inside the camera, you’ll be automatically transformed into an Autobot from Transformers!

(This demos uses face recognition and tracking. Nothing else is needed besides your human looks. But that one you’ll need, since the face recognition will look for two eyeballs, one nose, etc…)

2. Fight the dragon on your desktop!

Go to www.metaio.com/design/demo and download the Unifeye Design Demo Installer (Windows only). After installing, go to the subfolder (probably:) C:\Program Files\metaio\Unifeye Design Demo\examples\scenes\Knights&Dragons and print the file Drache_Marker_1.jpg.

Now start the Unifeye Design Demo link on your desktop. At the bottom of the screen you will see video play controls (rwd, play, stop, fwd), right next to those you’ll have three vertically aligned buttons: click the lower one and then select your webcam on the right. You’ll see your video feed. Go to File > Open and select examples > scenes > knights&dragons > DemoScene_Knights&Dragons.scef. Now hold the printed paper into the view!

(This demo uses feature based tracking, i.e. you have to use an image as a reference. In this case this is the castle image you printed. The whole tool can do much more and you can even import your own VRML files. If you have no clue, what that means, don’t worry. Try one of the other demos, that are shipped along.)

3. Go to where it all started!

Download the ARToolkit package from www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/download and unpack it. If you run Windows, copy this file into the unpacked folder ARToolKit\bin or download the OpenGL GLUT files from the web and copy them to your folder. Now print the file ARToolKit\patterns\pattHiro.pdf and start the program simpleVRML. You will see a bee buzzing above a flower - on your hand!

(This demo uses marker based tracking, i.e. you have to hold a black/white pattern into the camera’s view. This printed square will be recognised as the anchor, where the program will put the graphics. As you move around the pattern, the 3D objects will move along. This last demo ships with all the C source code. So if you are interested in learning more about augmented reality and starting to program your own application, continue reading on the ARToolkit website for tutorials or go to the Studierstube to get the ARToolkit Plus, that might be more comfortable or convenient for you. Both are free of charge.)

Of course, there are dozens of different free and more commercial systems, but for now, I only wanted to give you a brief and free impression, of what’s easily possible. Fascinated? Would you love further getting-started’s? Need help with my micro tutorial? Let me know! :-)

The guys from tvguide.co.uk seem to have managed a way to upload a video-camera-using iPhone application to the apple store. They claim that it works flawlessly, but only with the latest iPhone 3GS. So it seems, that Apple really opened up the video interface for the new SDK. Unfortunatelly I don’t own a 3GS… maybe someone can comment on first hand experience? In my (Germany-based) AppStore I can’t see more apps than the tv guide app itself. Hm, but if it’s true, I guess, Ori and his petition gained the goal even faster than expected. :-)

Oh yeah, and by the way… their software shows you overlaid arrows to the next tube. No biggie, but first proof of concept for iphoneAR@appStore. :-)