Hark, a light at the end of the tunnel?

Finally after long months of modeling, printing, failing and revising I have arrived at a completed RGBD toolkit setup complete with 3D printed camera mount, Kinect and fancy DSLR camera with Live Mode. This was no small achievement and I am quite happy with my final rig. If only I could keep the camera......

As you can see the camera and the Kinect are now in an optimal locked position that can be transported and moved around in order to generate interesting 3D video! The next step was to do some calibration and try some test shots, tasks which have proven difficult in the past.

But not this time! Calibration worked the first time and I was able to get the setup into record mode at record time! 30 mins to be exact. I was able to complete a quick test shoot just to make sure the whole setup was working, but I was unable to generate any interesting video. I mean I have a video, but it's not very good and it's quite short. The reason why I was unable to spend more time on this was because we had user testing the this week for my project group here at the CDM and as such I was inundated with that work. So rather than show you all something that is not really that good, I thought that I would wait until next week to generate something more interesting with the RGBD setup.

However I still managed to get some more work done on the 123D Catch front. As you may recall I was having a hell of a time getting the automated system to return anything useful to me despite me hand stitching 30 odd photos together. Well this past week I made some head way by figuring out some key details in the 123D Catch process.

First off, the system wants me to actually walk around the model as I photograph it. This is because, I assume, the system notices light information and uses this to orient each picture in relation to the others in a circular fashion. With this aspect working I as able to get closer to a 3D model.

Secondly I learned not to use flash. While this is inconvenient because I have to setup my out lighting it does make sense when thinking about how 123D catch will be using the light information to lay out the individual photos. Reflecting on this whole journey it makes sense that the system wants me to provide it with very specific criteria in order to get a reliable 3D model in return. Anyway, images of said model!

The above images are exciting to me because I haven't done any clean up on the model or the photographs. While not perfect this is an improvement on every model that I had managed to get from 123D catch since and I consider this to be a major improvement. 

But still, this begs the question, "What am I going to do with all this?" Well, as luck would have it, Richard Smith, the Director of the MDM program, asked if I was able to create small 3D printed models of students using a Kinect. My answer was yes and no, meaning that I could do it but not with a Kinect but rather 123D. This is great because it gives me a solid goal to achieve during my last 2 weeks here at the CDM. While I will probably not be able to create models for every student, given clean up and printing times, I will probably be able to provide a proof of concept as well as enough documentation to teach a C7 how to carry on my work. What's that? Am I creating a 3D legacy for myself at the CDM? That's cool.

So! Busy week with my other project  but I still managed to get some work done on both of my research projects. I even managed to find a way that I could combine what I have learned from each into a final product that is for the director and the CDM as a whole. I'm going to start with some of my team members next week and see how long it takes to do 1 or 2 models and then try to ramp up production from there.

Back At It!

Greetings dear readers! I've been away healing up after my bout with the flu but now I'm back in production mode. So whats new?

I have successful completed the RGBD camera mount!

As you may recall this has taken me a long time to get to this point. First I had to find the correct 3D printing file, test it, correct it and re-print it. Once that was finally taken care of I had to track down the extra hardware that needed to go into it, namely some obscure screws and fasteners as well as a sliding plate mount for a DSLR camera. What I have in my greedy little hands now is an assembled mount that can hold both a Kinect and DSLR on a tripod securely. Progress!

Next I need a DSLR camera that supports live mode. Since I don't have $600 dollars to spare I've asked my friend Sheva if he would be so kind as to loan me his camera for a few hours while I do some tests. I'm still waiting on him to bring it to school, but I expect that I can get started with that tomorrow or early next week.

But what will I do with this you ask? Well I plan on taking the setup outside of the project room and recording some students doing whatever it is they do. From this footage I should get an idea of how well my final setup is working as well as the logistics of moving it all around after calibration. If all goes according to plan, then I have a few ideas for production videos, such as some CDM 3D digital life shots as well as a night time fire performance. The latter is a big question mark since normally you need lots of UV to get good footage. The lack of sunlight but addition of light from the fire may make for some compelling 3D images. Who knows!? Let's just hope security doesn't arrest me when I light my poi on fire. This should also give the back side of the CDM apartments something interesting to look at during dinner.

But that's not all! I've also been working with 123D Catch, continuing to try and nail down the process that will allow me to quickly create 3D models from a series of images. Here are some images of my most recent process:

I tried to be a clinical as possible with this shooting, even going so far as creating my own makeshift lazy suzan that allows me to incrementally rotate the object in a semi-controlled manner. What I ended up with was 64 photos that I thought would be great for 123D catch. So I sent off the files to the cloud and eagerly awaited a response from Autodesk.

The good news is that I got a model back from Autodesk and was able to start working with the stitching feature. This is great because I don't always get models back from 123D Catch, as they sometimes hang in processing forever.

The bad news is that it looked like this:

Yuck what is that? An amorphous blob is not what I was hoping for. After some consideration I came to the conclusion photographing a white object on a white piece of paper was probably not the best way to go about things. I suspect that contrast has a lot to do with the algorithms that Autodesk is using to create these models, and I missed the boat on that one. But no matter! I am using the desktop application which allows me to do some manual stitching of the photos.

This did not give me such good results. I am unsure if the program is just buggy as all get out or if my lack of contrast is compounding the problem. After 3 hours of trying to stitch photos, re-submitting the data and getting no noticeable improvement on the model I decided that I need to re-shoot (again) but this time with much more contrast. So that means either a black object or a black table on which a white object is shot.

So some progress and some set backs. I'm still trying to get caught up from my absence last week so I apologize for the lack of content. However assembling that camera mount was a big step in the right direction in my opinion. More to come next week! With actual videos! Promise.

Sick....

Hi Everyone. Sorry it's been quite round here the past week. I got sidelined by a bad flu and am just now getting myself back together. I made a little progress with my camera mount but I'll post more about that once I've made a little more this week.

Stay tuned! I'm better and working again!