Designed by David Hall
29 November 2011
28 November 2011
22 November 2011
21 November 2011
Prototype box 003 (w/ tracing paper)
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo + David Hall 2011
The reflection is less harsh when the tracing papers are placed on both sides.
Location options (Revised)
>>Long escalator<<
>>Commercial street<<
>>Market<<
>>Riverside<<
Yuri Endo 2011
According to our test results, we revised our location options.
20 November 2011
Kinect out post-production tests
We have tested various post-production options with our test footages.
19 November 2011
Notes from Kinect out
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
Tested locations:
-Supermarket
-Commercial street
-Subway corridor
-River side
-Night street
Suitable:
-Populous environment (crowded streets)
-Relatively closed environment ( both indoors and outdoors)
-High camera angle
-cocoaKinect
-RGB viewer
Unsuitable:
-Night shoot ( with limited light source)
-Water ( if not with cocoaKinect IR mode)
-Under bright sunshine
-Processing
-RGB reconstruction
-Brekel
Kinect out test 003
CocoaKinect>>Video+Depth>>Normals, Video (vs Depth)
CocoaKinect>>Video+Depth>>Normals
Elena Marchenko+Yuri Endo 2011
Kinect out test 002
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
Our second try-out of the day at a subway corridor.
Kinect out test 001
We tried our first outside shoot with Kinect at the local supermarket, Kim's club. The shooting went surprisingly smoother than we had initially expected, however the result turned out to be less dramatic than we wanted it to be as Kinect was evidently only capable of capturing the objects within approx. 1/2m-10m in distance.
Above movies were entirely captured with the realtime screen recording and video compression application, ishowU HD Pro
Kinect out
Elena Marchenko+Yuri Endo 2011
We placed 2 batteries, a inverter and a laptop on the kickboard for our outside shoot. Although we spent half a day to test shoot, the first battery did not even run out.
18 November 2011
Prototype box 002
Front 
Back
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo + David Hall 2011
* Custom made acrylic box @ 22,000 KRW
*Special thanks to Dahye Park
We would further have to figure out how we can get rid of the reflection casted from left side image onto the right side as well as the size of the actual box.
17 November 2011
New kids on the block
Yuri Endo 2011
*BX40L @ 48,000 KRW×4
*Special thanks to Dahye Park
This car battery and power inverter will be our friends for the outside shooting. ( Although the description says the battery weights 9.9 kg a piece, it feels like more when traveling. Apparently it would last for about 52 minutes.)
Bunny mask
www.maskmall.co.kr
*@ 4500 KRW×10
After weeks of searching, we have finally found an adequate bunny mask to put on for our character.
16 November 2011
Bunny Chasing
Our short movie would mainly consist of point of view sequences of a person who is chasing a character in a bunny mask.
15 November 2011
Prototype box 001
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo + David Hall 2011
Eventually, the second projector would be also placed on the left side in the same manner to make simultaneous 2 image projection come true.
Kinect MOV projection set up
Projection idea by David Hall
Our movie would be project on to an acrylic box ( 2 sides) as in the drawing above.
14 November 2011
Processing + Cinema 4D
Yuri Endo 2011
I have tried another scanning technique that we learned from the music video for Catalina by Moullinex.
05 November 2011
Brekel, at last
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
My teammate and I are currently trying out as many Kinect hack apps as possible to get the " look" we are looking for our movie as we shifted our mission to mix 3D scanned images with moving imagery.
Up until last week, we had been straggling for a while to get Brekel to work in our Mac OSX 10.6.8 by using VMware Fusion , little we knew that this virtual machine does not recognize Brekel ( apparently, it perfectly works via Boot Camp, however we decided not to push it further since we both have such limited trouble shooting skills when it comes to tech issues.) and we also were using wrong version of Windows, XP ( Supposedly it works well with Windows 7)
In conclusion, we have finally succeeded in putting an end to the nightmarish struggle simply by using a friend's Windows 7 computer. Compared to RGB demo, scanning time was significantly shorter and able to capture cleaner images. Most conveniently its obj. data can be exported straight to Maya.
01 November 2011
Midterm presentation
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
Due to technical difficulties, our live 3D scan demonstration with RGB Demo app turn into a video screening.
31 October 2011
RGBDemo with minimum camera movements
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
We re-tested 3D scanning with minimum camera movements. Compared to our previous test scanning with continuous movements, we were able to scan clearer images during the second try-out.
25 October 2011
18 October 2011
Mirror Test
Yuri Endo 2011
As suggested, I placed a mirror in front of Kinect to see if it really does capture reflections. (Reflections from>> Upper: a bathroom mirror, Lower: a handheld mirror) Next step is to find a parabolic reflector to place in front so we can achieve wide angle view from kinect.
16 October 2011
15 October 2011
10 October 2011
05 October 2011
Running with Marchenko
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
*CocoaKinect>>Point Cloud>>Normal
I clearly understood why most of the steadicam operators are well-build male with unapproachable air. The pratice videos which my fellow project mate, Elena Marchenko, and I worked on today ( I was the camera operator) looks exactly like a amateur girl's job. Serious training is a must to operate this monster correctly.
04 October 2011
Steadicam test
Elena Marchenko + Yuri Endo 2011
*Elena Marchenko trying out the steadicam
During today's calss, we mounted Kinect on steadicam for a test shoot. Although the equipment felt extremely heavy at first ( approximately 10kg) , when I started moving around, it became slightly lighter and manageable.
03 October 2011
Kinect+Laptop without an AC adapter?
Thanks to Professor D.H., I discovered some examples of Kinect power hack techniques which might clear out my power related concerns. Frankly, I am still in the process of understanding what is actually going on throughout this video and further research is absolutely needed before I wreck my laptop and Kinect. Stay tuned.
Fear and loathing on Hannam Bridge
Since I voluntarily crossed this bridge last summer, I have been seeking a visionary approach to document that exceedingly fearful experience. A few days ago, I attempted to reanimate the event and ended up backing off at the very tip of the bridge due to the strong wind. This time I have finally succeeded in reaching the mid point and capturing the glimpse of the feel.
Although, the bridge crossing experience may seem to be rather dull from this test video (mostly owing to my walking speed with a handheld camera on the shaky bridge.), it is unquestionably a slightest nerve wrecking activity. Hence, I am even more interested in recapturing its visual impact through the Kinect vision.
For the final movie, I plan to complete crossing the entire bridge, preferably not during peak hours where there are more supersonic speed drivers, to enhance both phycological and physical effects that the Kinect imagery may give out to the viewers.
What happened at the Kim's
While I'm simultaneously figuring out the power source solutions, I decided to go on location and shopping cart huntings for the potentials themes, especially for Theme One and Five, both of which I did not chose as locations during the production of my previous Z-depth and Movement project.
The above test was shot in the morning of a Korean national holiday at a large scale local supermarket, Kim's Club, located in 고속터미널 (Express Bus Terminal). My DSLR was placed on a tripot inside of a shopping cart. Initially, I was expecting people to give me a hard time shooting there, surprisingly no one cared or even noticed which made this location an A+.
Unfortunately, the shopping cart couldn't make it home with me.
02 October 2011
Possible locations
Theme One >>Bridge<<
Theme Two >>Public transportation<<
Theme Three >>Night vision<<
Theme Four >>Local scene<<
In addition to the themes that I had chosen for my past project, I have included two fresh locations on the list; Theme One: Bridge and Five: Supermarket
Alternative Z-mobile
It just came across my mind; in stead of inventing a Z-mobile myself, what if I purchased one of those which may be able to achieve something closer to what I have been desiring for? I still have to test how swiftly and stably this mini vehicle can be operated when a person on board with a laptop, kinect and possibly a power source. Nevertheless, it seems to come incredibly in handy when I need to proceed "nonchalant" film shootings in public spaces.
Looking for Mr. Goodpower
I have been seeking for Mr. Good; lightweight portable battery chargers and battery, to connect my kinect and laptop for outdoors/long distance uses.
Unfortunately all I could find up until 2 days ago were gigantic devices which were definitely not designed to be moved around to say the least. Considering myself not too much of an athlete, I wouldn't be able to even carry them around by myself, let alone testing it out "casually" in public spaces.
Today, I think I might have found a "lighter" solution thanks to Monsieur J.C. Naour. According to J.C., Kinect and laptop can be connected to DC inverter + 12V deep cycle battery which is smaller than a shoebox ( what a great description!) and can be highly portable. I'm off to the hunting.
26 September 2011
Kinect + Synapse
Yuri Endo 2011
*LEFT: After striking the "psi" pose for several seconds, you get a image of skeleton binded to yourself. RIGHT: The image you get from running Kinect test.qtz in the downloaded package.
Kinect can be also connected to Mac OSX via Synapse. Unlike cocoaKinect, this open source application seems as though there are no tilting functions, however, it allows us to use Kinect to control Ableton Live and Quartz Composer, among many others to add more visual and sound effects.
25 September 2011
Market research
Yuri Endo 2011
Since my previous Z-mobiles (Z-trolley 001, Z-trolley 002) were such amateur jobs, I would like to create more sophisticated and esthetic trolley this time. Above images are some design inspirations that I browsed at Dongdaemun Market in Seoul.
19 September 2011
Z-nect + Munny Test video
The test result indicated that Kinect needs at least 10 ㎝ distance to capture objects ahead of it. As the camera came closer to the object (approximately 15-10 ㎝ ahead) it showed color change and created an interesting imagery. Testing on the maximum distance would be my next mission as I only could test up to 3m this time due to my room size.
When Z-nect met Munnies
Yuri Endo 2011
To get a general idea of how a Z-nect imagery look like, I tied Kinect to an unused metal luggage carrier which I initially purchased for my previous Z-depth and Motion project, and captured 2 Munny dolls on my room floor.
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