The Pixel Farm

Over the past few months I’ve been working to create an authoring environment that help kids take advantage of augmented reality to help construct rich, 3D spaces in which they can tell stories in a fun, playful way.

Augmented Gnomes popping out of a sheet of paper!

While it’s not fully completed, I do have a working version that lets you construct simple scenes.  The current version can do the following:

• Add 2D planes to a 3D space
• Texture these planes using transparent PNG files
• Orient objects and adjust rotation and scale
• Create dynamic “cut-out” shadows based on the original material
• Handle timing to allow items to pop out in a specific sequence
• Save the file to an external server for permanent storage
• Reconstruct the scene in augmented reality

Here is a brief video that showcases the pop-up authoring environment as well as a finished product in action.

If you’re interested in seeing portions of this project in action, feel free to stop by the ITP Winter Show this weekend.  I will be showing off a voice controlled augmented reality project called the “Whisper Deck” which incorporates my AR pop-up books as one of its many interactive features.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Augmented Reality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.