Todd Vanderlin » work

Projection Wall at Arnold

Todd Vanderlin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:28:15 +0000

We got a new conference room at Arnold with an amazing projection wall. I could not wait to get in there and play. The wall is a very funny aspect ratio so I had to do some funny openGL business to compensate. There are two HD projectors 16:9 with a blended seam in the middle. I needed to figure out the gap and the actual pixel size of the wall to get it to work. Check out some little test I did, can’t wait to make something later.

Mass Art in the Lab

Todd Vanderlin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:07:51 +0000

A good friend Adam Larson brought his class from Mass Art into the Lab today. The students were really into print work and everything design but code. I wanted to show them that code is not scary. Using the simple cosine and sine equations we created generative art based on the color of pixels for the camera. I hope that they got excited to explore the world of code and design.

We made these four using some colored object around the lab.

Here are some close ups.

Turtle Cam

Todd Vanderlin — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:43:06 +0000

In the Lab we have some awesome turtles, Rock and Roll. Ryan built a new tank for them so they can swim and be free. We need to share this with the world, so we build a web cam.

Being the Lab that we are this can’t be any old web cam. So Ryan and I grabbed some motors and parts around the lab to built a completely controllable camera. Via the Arduino you can pan and tilt the camera. I used Quicktime Broadcaster which was super easy and free. I had it up and running in about 5 minutes. The only hard part was getting the signal to reach the outside world from inside a corporate network. The next step is to have an interface for the motors and camera for people to control via a web browser. I will post more when we have it online. Get ready for Rock and Roll.

Aquarium Day

Todd Vanderlin — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:06:51 +0000

Ryan and I went to the aquarium the other day, I can honestly say that I have never been. We were going for some research and man what a inspiring place. I loved all the shapes and colors. Hope to maybe make something with these soon. Check out more photos here.

Video Wall Day

Todd Vanderlin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:29:04 +0000

Ryan & I went to AVFX to work on some video wall solutions. I have never seen so much equipment in my life.

This wall was amazing. The have the whole system is running through Watchout. They way we got our app on there was via a DA. The NEC screens are able to grid the source, this kinda worked. The resolution gets is very strange, not to mention the aspect ration. I was able to fix this by reducing the x scale of the openGL world.

We also tried out these Orion LCD’s they are pretty cool. What I am concluding is that in order to do real time graphics from a single machine you need a serious GPU, rumor on the street there is a four headed Nvidia out there. I was able to connect two displays (HD) on the Mac via one graphics card and it ran the app great. The second I plugged in a third display and had the app span across multiple graphics cards the FPS dropped to about 5. I have found big wall application is very hard to do on a mac because of card limitations. I may be thinking of trying out a PC system.

The Vision Show

Todd Vanderlin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:01:11 +0000

The Vision Show was in Boston this week. What an interesting conference, most people were there to find the latest in machine vision solutions. We were there to find the best hardware solutions for our tables and pieces, Ohh man we did! People were so helpful to figure out what we could use in our work. Imagine Source taught us a ton and evan gave us a free camera. Can’t wait to try out some of the things we found.

This is the camera that Imagine Source gave us. It is unreal, 1024 x 768 resolution capturing at a solid 30 fps.

The had some funky face tracking set up. haha Check out all the photos from the show here buy cialis buy cialis buy levitra buy levitra buy propecia buy propecia buy soma buy soma buy levitra buy cialis buy propecia buy levitra buy soma buy cialis buy propecia buy levitra buy soma buy cialis buy levitra buy propecia buy soma

Streams

Todd Vanderlin — Tue, 13 May 2008 04:44:12 +0000

Working on a new piece, these are some early renderings. There are two video streams seamed together were particles and motion graphics come alive as you move around.

Kids & Interaction

Todd Vanderlin — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:55:24 +0000

We had some kids come in today, they got to see what we do and try out some of the toys. You can learn a ton watching kids interact with this table. It was amazing watching them learn how to use the table with no explanation. They would teach each other as they figured out new features. I have a ton of new ideas to take from this.

MultiTouch Calibration

Todd Vanderlin — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 21:25:23 +0000

I want to get some feedback on how to do a proper and simple calabration for a multitouch system. I am going to try and walk you through the process and construction of the table. Here is the main setup for the table. For the most part the table is working check out latest video. The blobs are showing up and somewhat consistent. Better adjustment of IR would fix this.

This is what the projection looks like. The throw of the projection is much larger than the table top. This is where the problem I think starts. I need to align the physical touch points to the projected touch points.

To get the correct image to track I perform a warping technique. I drag the four points of a quad to the four corners of the table. This creates a 640 x 480 warped image where pixel 0,0 is the top left hand corner. I think that this works well and does the job for the most part. It is on the other hand the most processor intensive part of the application. The distortion of the image is not terrible. I have tried Stefanix’s checkerboard calibration but do not completely understand how it applies other than compensate for wide angle distortion in the camera.

More info in photo notes

So now that we have a corrected image to track I need to match the projection to the tabletop. We do a very simalar calibration, this does not feel correct but works. You drag the four points of a quad warping the openGL world to the table. This for the most part works but the distortion of the GL world is weird. There must be a better way to do this.

I have been looking into all the techniques done by other systems like TouchLib and Reactivision. Most are a four point or many point touch calibration system. I have not completely figured this out, this is where I ask for help. What is the best way to do this calibration and setup?

Multi-Touch Photos

Todd Vanderlin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:32:32 +0000

Here is a new video of the Touch Table. We are working on a classic multi-touch photo appm, there are bugs but we are working them out. We have a set of photos growing here.

Thanks to Ryan Habbyshaw and The OF Team.

Multitouch

Todd Vanderlin — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:12:56 +0000

Working on a simple multitouch display. This is a small prototype next I want to scale the screen up. I will have more soon.

Processing Bug

Todd Vanderlin — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:37:01 +0000

Alpha bug in processing not sure how to fix it. As the images rotate in 3D space the bounding border is shown.

update: Fixed, well turned on depthTesting. This works but you loose track of depths.

Building The Lab

Todd Vanderlin — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:27:45 +0000

Its been awhile and haven’t talked much about the lab. I will have more coming soon, I’m still here.

IDEA:039 (Interactive Paper)

Todd Vanderlin — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 00:48:04 +0000

This a project that I have been working on for awhile now. Finally over vacation I made some good headway. Here it is, go make some “Paper” and see how creative you are.

Update:
Project makes it to PixelMakers

Concept:
IDEA:039 (Interactive Paper) is a collaborative art project. Through interaction with a camera the artist composes a designs in time lapse. The results are then uploaded to Flickr, creating a growing “piece of paper”.

Keep in mind this is new technology. Updates will arrive as the software develops. Uploading take some time, be patient. Hopefully Flash 8.5 and AS3 will fix this problem.

Links:
Project Page
IDEA:039 @ Flickr