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2006 Report for Development
Throughout the latter part of 2005 testing was carried out using various software authoring environments to determine which would be most appropriate for use in this project. The EyesWeb Development Environment has proved the most flexible.
This IDE has a substantial catalogue of blocks that cover most functions found in the OpenCV library and allows for the coding in c++ of user defined blocks. This has commenced with the creation of a simple Acceleration and template block.
This block gets the pixel value of acceleration of a given object, in this case a blob's COG x and y co-ordinates. Due to the flickering of the blob capture, a smoothing function was added that served as a gate to allow only values of movement over a certain threshold; anything below was considered to be an artifact of capturing and locking onto an object in infra-red light and the jitter/flicker it presented. This threshold seems to be no greater than 1 px movement in either axis.
The Acceleration also serves as a template for future blocks to be coded in that components of its source files can be copied into new blocks and also other functions utilising the OpenCV library can be imported into EyesWeb via this template. Currently under development is the Collision Series that include seperate collision detection, net force and impulse blocks as well as a seperate block that deals with one of the major issues facing this project - camera/projector alignment.
Compensating for camera lens distortion and projector alignment will allow for accurate pixel painting of a moving performer, as well as the accurate tracking of a given object onstage. While by no means necessary to the project's success, it is a key area of development that will provide a greater level of functionality - in this instance, performer derived motion tracking.
In the first half of March, OSL will be providing some visual elements to a production of Apocalypse Now II at La Mama, Carlton Courthouse. After preliminary talks with the writer/director, Graham Downey, several key visual effects are being coded and tested. The first involves simple background set lighting, where a piece of the set is lit with a determined colour or masked video. This requires the use of the camera/projector alignment block.
The second major effect is to have the performer "grab" and manipulate a video projection of a starfield. This task utilises the Acceleration block. Additional effects may be required after a meeting with the lighting designer and the performer, due to take place within the first week of February.
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