Pink virtual frogs follow user's dance

This interactive demo was created during a content creation course in Helsinki University of Technology. The video was shot at the course's final demo event.

The frogs are animated in realtime, following the user's movement which is captured with a standard webcam. The camera flythroughs are predefined to create a cinematic effect.

Like with many course projects, plenty of critical coding was done just days before the deadline. Many unfixed issues were left in the final presentation, including the shaky and sometimes quite akward character animation. With further work these issues can be solved, and this video is more like a proof of concept, than a solid production.


Technical details:

User has four markers with different colors attached to his body. The 2d positions of the markers are tracked with a webcam, and this information is used to animate the virtual dancers (frogs). The animation is calculated through physical ragdoll simulation, which provides better dynamics than simple inverse kinematics. Since only 4 markers are tracked, the virtual dancers can mimic the user's actions only so far. Basic arm and leg movement is captured nicely, and even cartwheels are captured with some accuracy.

3D engine: Ogre3D
Physics engine: ODE through OgreOde interface
Computer vision: OpenCV

The video and audio quality is a bit poor, since this clip is captured with a video camera pointed at a moviescreen.


Credits:

Jukka Larja:
sound programming, environment setup

Munehiko Sato:
tracking programming

Tuukka Takala:
concept, animation programming, graphics


Music:

Towa Ando
http://www.voiceblog.jp/andotowa/

Ken
http://atmosound.net/

Kirsti Larja:
dancing

Nanae Saka:
music librarian

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• dancing
• 3d
• cg
• animation
• realtime
• tracking
• vr
• virtual
• opencv
• ogre3d
• ode
• computer
• vision

[core36]

looks great ^^

but ... frogs... came out of a toilet ...in the middle of a grassland? just makes no sense xP

[changling21]

excellent exercise video with pink frogs. I will send

this to my friend janice .. five stars !

[FHomeBrew]

I sometimes write graphics software, but I can never get my computations quick enough for a high frame-capture rate.

Maybe if I capture all the images first, then post-process them and feedback the coordinates or something. A bit slower, but it only requires one performance XD

[biitchymilktea]

er , what is this ? o.o , rofls .

[faviogrind]

yu do wiht ogre 3d(object-orient... )?

[nifigasibe]

cool!