Archive | ITP

Posts related my work for NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program

Instant Film Pixelation Filter

By AJ on February 4, 2016 in ITP

Stop Motion 3D in Unity with Kinect Sensor

By AJ on October 20, 2015 in ITP

I am currently researching how to put together stop motion OBJ sequences in unity. I have been doing 3D scans of my real life model with an ASUS XTION sensor to create my main character. The first sequence is a simple walking movement which will be made up of only 8 frames. Once I have a greater understanding for the process in unity I will be creating more scans. To do this I will be using the unity asset called Mega Cache which natively supports the import of OBJ Sequences.

360 ‘VR’ Video with Ricoh Theta & Youtube

By AJ on October 19, 2015 in ITP, ITP Fun

The Ricoh Theta is a 360 degree camera, it can be used as the most amazing fisheye lens for still images ever, it can also easily be used to make 360 degree/’VR’ films. Since Youtube now natively supports these interactive films getting them to the public is easier than ever.

When viewing this videos through the youtube app on a mobile device with a gyroscope you can use said device to physically pan around the video. If you’re on android the app actually supports google cardboard for an instant VR experience, they have not added this functionality in the iOS app. If on your computer use the WASD keys, or arrow keys to look around.
If you want to experience 360 youtube videos with iOS and a cardboard you can use the non google app in360tube on your iphone. The app is a bit buggy and seems to be lower quality than the youtube app, but it works.

To create the above video I did not need to use any external 3D software to make this, I have laid out the straightforward process below:

1. Transfer video to computer
Transfer the video directly from Ricoh Theta device – Do not use iPhoto/Photos if on OSX – it will change the video format.

2. Stitch Video File

This is what the initial output from the video looks like, as you can see it is cut in half, so now we must stitch it together. To fix this run the video through Ricoh’s Theta application. This will stitch it together. After this you can use it in a variety of ways including as a 360 mesh in 3D programs.

3. Embed Metadata
Now we must make sure Youtube recognizes and processes our file as an interactive 360 video. To do this we must use an application or python script to embed meta data that can later be read by youtube. Doing this is easy, just follow the instructions from google..

4. Upload your new video to Youtube, no more special treatment needed.

** After upload the video will initially appear stitched together, but do not worry. Youtube automatically detects the metadata you embedded earlier in the video then converts it into an interactive 360 video for you, they claim the process can take up to an hour but it took my three minute video about five minutes. Enjoy!

RWET Final: Twitter Portraits

By AJ on May 11, 2015 in ITP, Reading & Writing Electronic Text

For my RWET final I created a program that uses a users twitter account feed in conjunction with a photo to create a unique poem based on that user. The above two poems were extracted from @barackobama and @christymack.

The code can be found here

Creating Poetry from Images – xFiles

By AJ on April 27, 2015 in ITP, Reading & Writing Electronic Text

Using the Python programming language I created a script that creates poetry based on images and a source text. When ran the program detects pixel brightness values of the image and assigns a popular word from the source text to that pixel brightness, the result is fun, new poetic form that bases word frequency and spacing on the assigned image.
To demonstrate this script I used the X-files. I took the entire script and used it as my source text, I pulled the most popular words from ALL episodes of the x-files and mapped them to different photos from the television show. The code for this project can be found here: https://github.com/aj701/Rwet-Midterm

Portraiture in 3D

By AJ on April 22, 2015 in Computational Portraiture, ITP

My exploration in 3D portraiture originated during my Computational Portraiture class at ITP. Coming from a traditional photographic background I had not been overly impressed with what available 3D technologies was bringing to the table, I constantly saw artists battling with the technology, trying to fix its imperfections, creating odd looking 00s’s style videogame caricatures. My first experiments were with an original xbox kinect where I scanned myself using skanect software for mac, after my first scan I plugged the file into meshmixer and began distorting it. My final product from this experiment ended up being a quick GIF I made (photo 1). Afterwards this experiment I got excited about making statuesque surreal figures based on 3D scans, I quickly took a Micrsoft Scanner home and started creating scans of spaces and friends, with the holiday of passover was approaching and I thought it would be a good idea to create scans of my family. Instead of a Microsoft Kinect I decided to try the structure.io sensor which ran on iOS devices. For my needs the structure.io was a failure – it did not allow me to get close enough to my subjects to obtain detailed portrait scans. Through research I found the best scanner for my needs was an ASUS XTION with RGB camera, which is basically a rebranded Primesense scanner (a pioneering company in 3D scanning that was recently bought by Apple). Through mounting my ASUS XTION to my laptop I was able to create a semi portable “rig” for 3D scanning photography.

After finishing my passover scans I didn’t feel satisfied with the results, after discussing details of the project with my friend and co-classmate Pat Shiu we decided to collaborate on a series of images. Using her wearing a winter coat we created unique character who we followed along in different situations around New York. We walked the city doing outside environmental scans,carefully composing scenes as we searched for detail in physical depth (not light as in traditional photography) – sometimes combining elements from different scans to create surreal atmospheres for our character to travel through.

The resulting project is a series of three images (with more in the works) following our character through a surreal journey in New York City.

3D Portraiture – Blue/Red Shift

By AJ on April 21, 2015 in ITP

I recently experimented with multiple 3D scanned photographs. I emulated redshifts and blueshift to enhance motion both in both animated GIF and still images. To capture this I scripted three positions to show the the turning of the head, then used an 3d scanner attached to my computer to measure the depth of the composition. I used all three images at once and overplayed color so that when head turns forward there is a blueshift to show compressed lightwaves. I then mirrored the first two images and shifted the color to red to emulate the look of longer light waves as the head turns back away.