Project Proposal: Near Complete

This proposal needs some student numbers on the front page. It addresses all criteria and length requirements.

Download Word Doc

A flash of genius!

Hey,
Gordon came up with a cool idea for a metaphor for having ideas or options in the maze. When a user moves through the maze and chooses to stray from the original path, they can turn a second light (or something to that effect) as a metaphor for having that (that being the idea to stray) idea. Yay! If that is confusing, just talk to me or GG.

Zac.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Need Ya, Tomorrow

You're only a day away...

Will be in tute room tomorrow afternoon after work from 4PM onwards. See you crazy cats there.

It works! The silly thing works!

Fired up Director tonight and installed the WebCam Xtra plugin - once the installation niggles were out of the way, I fired up one of the demo coded programs and was amazed by what I saw!

It works - straight 'out of the box' - with nothing but a dodgy no-name $20 webcam!

I was impressed, to say the least.

Probably the most useful demo I've looked at so far is called 'cactus' - it gives an edge tracer of what the camera is looking at - the stronger the contrast, the 'furrier' the edge. Very cool.

Now to dig under the bonnet and tinker with it's ticker...

Group Roles

A list of each group member's role in production:

Director Programming / WebCam Xtra Integration

• Gordon


• Andrew

These two characters will be responsible for generating a Director application that reads a user's location via the WebCam xtra, then changes the projected images accordingly.

Concept Development, Texture Design

• Aleesha


• Zac

Aleesha and Zac will take on the role of designing textures to be projected as the user navigates their way through the invisible maze. This role will entail room design, creating an atmosphere and reinforcing the ecology of the proposed environment.

Video Mock-Up of 'Proof of Concept'

• Dan

Because a real-world implementation of four projectors and four screens may be very difficult (and outside the scope and budget of this project), Dan will attempt to 'film' what a proposed user experience would look like as they navigate through the invisible maze, then slice it up into a Quicktime/WMV movie.

Comments/queries/questions/concerns? Whack on a comment.

Other Student Project Using WebCam Xtra

A run-down on a small-scale project (smaller than ours, even) created by students using the WebCam Xtra.

Physical Motion Interface

Who needs an EyeToy?

Need inspiration for the project but don't have a PS2 and EyeToy?

Check PlaydoCAM.

Director Xtra: Motion Sensing via Webcam

Myron Webcam Xtra

A worthwhile visit, for anyone's who's got a copy of Director and a webcam at home.

Proposal (Due April 20th)

As part of the assessment, we'll need to flesh out:

1. Title


2. A paragraph synopsis of the proposed work no more then 500 wrds


3. An outline of the project plan


4. A list of each group members role in the production


5. the URL for group weblog/website

Since items 1, 4 and 5 are pretty much complete (will need to be enumerated, however), we should be able to spend a half hour or so cracking out the synopsis and proposed plan as a team.

No More Beam-Breakers

After chatting with Glen, Aleesha and Zac last week, I decided to go back to the drawing board and try and utilize a digital camera as a means of picking up the motion, looking down on a room and feeding the image back to a PC.



In this prototype sketch, the four different projections, while not accurate, are shown as a means of manipulating the various cast members if we were to make this a Director prototype app.

The green lines are just a messy maze outline I whacked in for demo purposes.

Interpretations

Hi everyone,
After talking to Gordon and Aleesha in class the other day I realised how different everyone's interpretations of the assignment were. This simply cannot be. I suggest we each post what we think we're doing. I'll go first:

We're creating a visible pathway in a room, possibly with masking tape on the floor, that would be a metaphor for our journey through the CIP (like our time there doing our degree). But because we don't always go straight ahead the way we're meant to, the participant is given opportunities, indicated by audio and visual media, to stray from the path. In the end the participant may not end up where they thought, but they will end at an exit from the room, a metaphor for leaving the CIP.

That's just my interpretation.

Available for stuff

Hey guys,
I'm feeling a bit useless at the moment in regards to this assignment, does anyone have any jobs that need to be done? I'm mainly talking to you, Gordon, as you seem to be our leader. Is there anything I can do to move things along more easily or quickly? Thanks.

Maze Tiles

Stuff. To. Do.

We'll probably be able to use a small sub-team to start putting together a library of 'walls' for use in flick-scrolling mode.

For an example of the [technical, not artistic] style of graphics/motion I'm talking about, check out the Eye of the Beholder series of RPG games.

Download Eye of the Beholder

In short, a series of pseudo-3D, 2D tiles are needed; imagine they will be projected onto four different walls, and give the user an idea of what looking North, South, East and West from their current co-ordinates would give.

As far as locale and artistic direction go, this would be where we'd do well to further explore linking the project in with the 'ecologies' theme: will we re-produce a real-world location (possibly from another QUT campus), or possibly even use a real-world location's physical arrangement, but apply our own [far out, trippy] textures?

Good job for 1-2 team members. Any takers? 3D spatial skills and 2D texture skills recommended.

Tech Specs:

- Create an 8x8 maze on some grid paper with one or two paths, maybe even dead ends
- Consider that walls have no depth: create a N,S,E and W viewpoint from every co-ordinate
- Wall tiles do not have to be unique (otherwise you'd end up with 8 x 8 x 4 tiles)
- Explore possibility of having 'themed' rooms
- Each wall tile should, ideally, convey a sense of depth, and be a minimum 640 x 480 px resolution

Who Set Us Up?

I can't remember who set this blog up... Andrew? Dan? Zac? Anyhoo. Doesn't matter, so much as allowing Glen (our tutor) access to post anonymous comments. It would appear that only the instigator presently has permissions to do that...