Play Dress Up With Kinect

kinect_virtual_dressing_room

While we have seen Kinect-based virtual dressing rooms before, the team at Arbuzz is taking a slightly different approach (Translation) to the digital dress up game. Rather than using flat images of clothes superimposed on the subject’s body, their solution uses full 3D models of the clothing to achieve the desired effect. This method allows them to create a more true to life experience, where the clothing follows the subject around, flowing naturally with the user’s movements.

Like many other Kinect hacks, they use openNI and NITE to obtain skeletal data from the sensor. The application itself was written in C# with Microsoft’s XNA game development tools, and uses a special physics engine to render the simulated cloth in a realistic fashion

[Lukasz] says that the system is still in its infancy, and will require plenty of work before they are completely happy with the results. From where we’re sitting, the demo video embedded below is pretty neat, even if it is a bit rough around the edges. We were particularly pleased to see the Xbox’s native Kinect interface put to work in a DIY project, and we are quite interested to see how things look once they put the final touches on it.

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Kinect-controlled Quadrotor

kinect_quadrotor_control

The team over at the Flying Machine Arena has been busy combining two of our favorite toys – quadrotors and Kinect.

Like many other hacks, they are using Kinect to monitor their joint positions, mapping a handful of actions to the operator’s movements. Once the quadrotor is aloft, it can be directed around the room using the operator’s right hand. The gesture recognition system responds almost instantly, guiding the vehicle in all directions with ease. When the user’s left hand is raised, the quadrotor does a mid-air flip and awaits its next command, while a quick clap of the hands brings the machine to rest on the ground.

For the protection of anyone testing out the system, overhead motion tracking cameras are used to keep track of the Kinect’s position, creating an invisible midair barrier through which the quadrotor is not allowed to pass.

If you have a minute, check out the video below – controlling quadrotors looks way more fun than any Kinect game we’ve come across.

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Sandbox Game In A Sandbox

The team at Monobanda have been working on a sandbox game called Mimicry that uses a Kinect to read the terrain of a sandbox.

From the teaser video and press release, the eventual goal appears to be controlling both a character in the game and the environment simultaneously. By reading the terrain of the sandbox with a Kinect, the team was able to import that into the game world. The team says the game world is inhabited by tiny virtual characters that, “roll around, jump and glide through the Mimicry world.” Anyone playing Mimicry can create obstacles for these little creatures or build them a race track. The Monobandia team says the point of this game is, “to create your own games.” With a fully editable world and its ‘rolling ball’ inhabitants, we can’t wait to make our own custom Beyblade arena.

Since the release of the Kinect SDK a few weeks ago, we’ve been seeing some really amazing projects that should have been day-1 demos from Microsoft. We’ve been impressed with the projects we’ve seen so far, and can’t wait to see what others come up with next. If you have a neat build, be sure to send it into the tip line.

Check out a video testing the game mechanics after the break.

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3D Display Using A Kinect

Youtube user [programming4fun] got a Kinect for father’s day and with just a little bit of code, came up with a 3D display using only a Kinect. Instead of the usual Kinect hacks like computer vision or playing Mario, we think the ‘Holographic display’ for the Kinect is one of the most useful implementations of the Kinect we’ve seen.

The build uses the Kinect SDK. The end result is a lot like the Kinect snowglobe we covered earlier, only instead of custom acrylic domes and a projector, this build enables pseudo-3D on any display. The hack works by having the Kinect track the users head. From that, it’s pretty simple to display a projection of a 3D model.

The system only supports a 3D display for one person, although with shutter glasses, that could be could be doubled. [programming4fun] says he’s thinking about adding anaglyph 3D – while the effect on video is pretty amazing, he says it’s not entirely convincing in real life.

We talked to the extremely modest [programming4fun], and he says the build isn’t technologically impressive at all. We’d disagree with that assessment because interfaces requiring movement have been around since 1963 and they still haven’t caught on for a wide audience. While there have been a few motion controlled devices that have worked well, most of them have been pretty bad. The Kinect 3D display seems like it would have some utility with a Microsoft Surface type device.

[programming4fun] says if there’s enough interest he might be convinced to clean up his code and create an installer. Check out the video after the break.

UPDATE: [programming4fun] uploaded another demo with a “behind the scenes” look after this was published. Check it out.

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Synapse Turns Your Kinect Into A Dubstep Theremin

kinect_dubstep_theremin

[Ryan Challinor] is part of a group constructing a display for this year’s Burning Man festival that includes the Kinect, Ableton Live, and Quartz Composer. As the programming guru of the project, he was tasked with creating a method for his partners to utilize all three products via an easy to use interface.

His application is called Synapse and was inspired by videos he saw online of people controlling individual Dubstep beats or sound effects with the Kinect. Synapse allows you to map multiple effects to each limb, sending joint positions, hit events, and image depth data to both Ableton and Quartz Composer via OSC. The user interface looks fairly easy to work with, enabling musicians and artists to create awesome audio/visual displays using their bodies as instruments, in a very short period of time.

Check out the pair of videos below to see a brief walkthrough of the software interface as well as a quick video demonstration of what Synapse is capable of.

[via KinectHacks]

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Official Kinect SDK Released

Microsoft just released the beta of the Kinect for Windows SDK. Although, “Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products” it appears Microsoft have changed their tune and released APIs for C++, C# and Visual Basic seven months after the Kinect was officially hacked.

We’ve seen libraries being developed since the launch of Kinect, culminating in the OpenKinect project. The Microsoft release covers the same ground as the OpenKinect project, and will hopefully improve on attempts to get audio out of the Kinect.

We’ve seen Kinect hacks run the gamut from telepresence, to robotics, to 3D modeling, so the Kinect seems like a great tool in the builder’s arsenal. The Kinect is a wonderful tool, and even though most of the functionality has already been replicated by the open-source community, it’s nice to know there’s official support for all the great projects we’ve seen.

Create And Conflagrate Giant Modeled Sculptures With Kinect And CNC

Summer has hit, and with it a bunch of crazy people going to crazy festivals and (often) burning crazy sculptures to crazy music! In that vein [Matthew Goodman] recently got involved in the burning flipside community down in Texas for his first big effigy build.  The project called for a gigantic archway flanked by two human shaped figures, since he had been working in Kinect [Matt] decided to try his hand at physically modeling the figures from Kinect mesh data.

After co-registering the depth and image cameras, setting up a capture routine to record, getting  .ply based meshes from the depth camera, and making a keypoint detector [Matt] was ready to start getting real world data from the Kinect. Armed with a ghetto steadycam built from his local Austin Hackerspace‘s spare parts bin, [Matt] proceeded to collect three 1.5 gigabyte scans of the charming [KT], who served as a model for the sculpture.

Once the meshes were imported to sketchup they could be merged and smoothed into a coherent form. The figure was split into CNC-able parts (known as the “lady bits” by [Matt] and his crew) and sent to local makers [Dave Umlas] and [Marrilee Ratcliff]’s ShopBot CNC mill. The 400 some odd bits of wood were then carted to flipside, methodically set up, and promptly set aflame the end of the event.

We have seen a couple of really interesting burning man projects, but this is possibly the shortest lived end result. Stay tuned this summer for more insane Black Rock City bound creations as well. Also don’t forget to check out [Matt]’s site for more details.