Archive for the ‘Projects’ Category

ProjectedQuads source code

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

ProjectedQuads
On request from several people I decided to finally release source code of my projection mapping projects. I wanted to make a Processing library from it anyway at some point but I delayed it so many times that it might never happen.

Features

- unlimited number of quads
- support for static images and dynamic generative animations
- loading and saving configuration to a text file

Download

ProjectedQuadsTest.zip [7kb]

How to use it?

Let’s say we want to display an image with perspective correction. First declare variables for our image and quad that will display it.

PImage img;
ProjectedQuads projectedQuads;

Then in setup() function load the image, create projectedQuads object, set number of quads and assign textures to them.

void setup() {
img = loadImage("checker.png");
projectedQuads = new ProjectedQuads();
projectedQuads->setNumQuads(1);
projectedQuads.getQuad(0).setTexture(img);
}

All we have to do in draw() function is just call projectedQuads.draw();

void draw() {
projectedQuads.draw();
}

Run the sketch and adjust corners of the quad using mouse or keyboard. Attached example source code explains how to use more quads and display dynamic graphic generated in processing.

Some other projects that I use this code for:

- “3xI” reactive projection mapping during Vivisesja festival. Read more about it on my blog.

3xI

- During Shiftcontrol’s end of they year meeting I did small projections to add some life to the globetrotters pub where it took place.

Data Gestures

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

Data Gestures

Data Gestures is a title of my final CIID project. It’s a very busy period for me so I’m publishing only a small info now.

Description:

This mobile application is a result of exploration of mobile gestural interfaces for personal data mining. By providing means both for
collecting and visualizing data on the go this software tries to assist it’s user in deep understanding of patterns emerging in his everyday life.

Full info:

Every day is a stream of small actions and decisions that we make, from getting out of the bed in the morning to choosing what to buy for the dinner. Separately they might seem irrelevant but gathered together and put into right context might give a whole new insight into our life. This project is trying to answer how to design a mobile application that would assist us in collecting and visualizing this data. Proposed application is focused mainly on money spending of the user. We can add items that we buy and assign them to several
categories. That data if carefully tracked it can provide us with information about things like eating habits or when put together with
data from other sources it can give impression of overall quality of his life. Interface of the application allows us also to filter the data or search for specific information. Taking small screen size and gestural interface as a challenge Data Gestures project is moving away
from data visualization paradigms known from desktop computing. Because of using multitouch input personal data mining becomes playful and useful at the same time. Buy being able to perform all this operation on the go and having dedicated interface tracking becomes easier. Data visualization available all the time with us (as long as we have mobile phone) is another incentive for gathering even more data hopefully influencing future decisions for a better balanced life.

Improving iPhone photo quality

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

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Have you ever tried to make close-up photos using your iPhone? Yes, it’s impossible… iPhone camera has fixed focus so every time you want to take photo of something that is closer that 30 cm the photos come out blurry. I needed to take a lot of pictures of post-it’s and I was very annoyed by the quality of the results. I knew that there are some protective cases with build-in lens that can fix that, but they are too expensive to me.

But today I came across a small magnifying glass in our studio. Hmm. I decided to try it. I attached it to my iPhone with a tape and did some quick test.

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The results were UNBELIEVABLE!

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plant

I think I’ll use it a lot this month :D (before I can get new iPhone).

MSAFluid and motion tracking

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Recently I did small interactive installation together with shiftcontrol and Obscura at Re-New festival in Copenhagen. We used MSAFluid solver for processing and custom application for motion tracking done in OpenFrameworks.

Here is the video:

Some screenshots from motion tracker:
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We used IR camera and some IR light from behind to improve the tracking. I found some interesting issues like that jeans doesn’t reflect IR light. Strange..

Anyway it was nice to play a bit with projections in the public space. Next time will be better.

Standing On The Shoulders of Giants

Monday, May 4th, 2009

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Last month I was helping Jacob Sikker Remin with his first solo exhibition.

First thing was to program light tubes animation. Jacob constructed a cube out of them I asked I we can program them so they light moves like in a snake game. Hmm. Sure :) After 2 hours I had a prototype in Processing.

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Then we ported it to Arduino so he can install stand alone version at the exhibition. The results were amazing. I wish I was there..

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Next I was given a piece of text by Jacob that he wrote after being inspired by Enzio Manzini lecture on future of design. My task was to automate process of filing screen with a sentence and make an animation out of this sequences. Here is the result mixed with music, drawings and animation contributed by Jacob’s friends and his wife:

That later was remixed by Rosa Menkman into this:

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You can find more photos in Jacob’s flickr set :
standing on the shoulders of giants – exhibit pics.

My first iPhone demo

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Recently I started learning how to program iPhone applications. At the same time I accidentally came across fast demo competition at scene.pl (polish demoscene portal). This seem like a perfect opportunity for me. Doing something for fun and learning programming at the same time. The theme for the competition was old school checkerboard effect. After one evening I had something up and running.

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Next whole night and day was about polishing the effect and fixing bugs. All the time I was cooperating with my friend Ninja who was responsible for graphics and chiptune music. In the end we created this small animation (I suggest watching HD version).

Screen capture :

Live version:

Finally 7 prods were released at the compo and we’ve got 2nd place!

Because I’m using jailbroken iPhone and I’m not yet registered developer (so I can’t distribute applications in the App Store) I decided to release source code of this intro at Pouet.net. After reading all the comments it looks like we released the first (or second, depending on the point of view) iPhone demoscene production! Yeah! :D

Now try to guess what the title of this demo “(+45)tro” is about?

OpenProcessing.org

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

openprocessing-sml

OpenProcessing is a ‘flickr’ish place for Processing addicted generation.

I have some old sketches waiting to be shown to the world so today I decided to join that crowd. Here is my gallery : Portfolio of Marcin Ignac at OpenProcessing.org.

vorg-at-openprocessing

It’s nice that you can watch the sketches in you browser and even download source code. Have fun!

Color keying alternative for prototyping user interfaces

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

I made this video while making Energy Rehab prototype. During this process I’ve learned one cool After Effects trick. When you prototype screen interfaces you often would like to present them in video scenario. But to do this you have to show them somewhere in the real world let it be a screen or mobile phone. If it’s a computer screen its easy. You can build a interactive website that is a mockup of the interface or even just display static images on you mobile. But what if you want to show devices that don’t exists or show more sophisticated interaction static images are not enough.

Several times I tried to use color keying to remove the screen and substitute it with animation of the interface. And almost always I ended up with something like this.

color-keying

The problem is that without proper lighting you will always have problems with shadows. But Vinay suggested me a very easy trick. Basically you create 3 layers. One with original video sequence, second one on top of it with animated interface, and third one with part of the video that is covering the screen masked out. Here is a picture explaining it:

composition

It looks like I’m going to use it a lot!

Energy Rehab

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Energy Rehab – this is the final name of our project. It took some time before I get used to it but now I think it’s quite cool.

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Basically we extended our idea about stickers indication how much energy device is using into energy prepaid cards. Just like in mobile phones.

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You buy a limit of energy, charge devices with some initial amount of energy and them you recharge them based on your needs. If you don’t have energy left on your card you can transfer some energy from other devices or even borrow it from your friends.

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And here is some early prototype:

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Because of lack of time and human resources (it was already a lot of work for both of us) we didn’t manage to include all features in our video. They were about real word usage of our system and some interface issues. For example we developed a new type of stickers (this with two arrows forming a circle) that can recharge themselves. You don’t want you fridge to run out of electricity, do you? We have also a nice idea about assigning ID’s to our stickers. You could simply flip your energy card, draw a symbol representing you device, tap, and slider you finger on the card towards the sticker to transfer the drawn icon to it.

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Here is our final video:

Oh, and I have to mention once again how much I love Inkscape for drawing vectors! This time I really needed some hands for the flash animation for the movie so for the first time I was sketching in Inkscape and the results were surprisingly good in very short time:

sketching

Prototyping energy usage visualization

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

After going through all ideas we generated last week we decided to do something about energy usage visualization and managing whole energy balance at your home. Both Vinay and Jay said many times that creating awareness is not enough and the real solution to address sustainability problems is about changing the behavior.

So this time we were asked to go back to our users from last week and try some of our initial ideas in real life. My idea was to visualize energy usage of devices but putting an orange sticker every 30 minutes on every device that was turned on.

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I did this with my roommate and the results were very surprising. Beside noticing how many lights we have turned on all the time my friend who is very conscious about energy usage realized that he is leaving his laptop turned on every night. This problem with devices is called electricity vampires. This happens when device is not used but still use standby power.

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We really liked the idea about stickers so did faculty so we build 2 low resolution prototypes.

At this stage we already know what we want to develop as our finale deliverable. It will be a higher resolution video prototype with some probes and some post processing if needed.