(For this phase of the project I will be posting artistic development sections, exploring different rendering styles, and techniques for integrating organic input for final image creation)
This quick video shows basic rendering stylization, as well as slightly enhanced use of the Organic Motion Camera.
Rendering:
For rendering enhancement, I have worked on basic anti-aliasing techniques, detail exaggeration, as well as a simple depth of field function.
Depth Key
For depth function implementation, I am quickly rendering terrain and main objects to a separate layer, where the distance of each pixel from the camera is stored in the blue channel. Though it is slower to re-render to a separate layer, a rendering separate key image also allows more channels for other effects, such as heat distortion.
From the depth image, I generate a line map with a simple laplacian filter. This image contains edges around objects, and how much they differ from the background. Once the final scene and the depth layers have been rendered, I filter the main image through a Gaussian blurring filter with the final Depth Image, and the Depth Line Image as keys. The depth lines are used for primary edge softening, while the general depth data is used to implement and basic depth of field function.
For the depth of Field, a variable is set for a threshold in which to increase the level of blurring. This implementation only simulates blurring from the far plane, and does not quite represent realistic camera focus. This effect could be further enhanced with multiple threshold values that define near and far planes, and how quickly they fade, simulating depth of field and focusing operations.
Color Key
After all scene components have been rendered, I generate a basic line map of the image with a simple laplacian filter. This map can be used simply as a key to blur harsh edges, or to sharpen image detail.
For sharpening lines on closer objects, I first process the Color Line Map with a simple Gausian Blur filter to soften and enlarge the lines. The data from this image is subtracted from the scene image to darken the extracted color lines. This function is scaled by the depth data, so that only close objects show enhanced detail.
I also use this line map to implement simple motion blur, similar to the technique used for the light map. Once the initial line map is rendered, I render the previous line map with scaled intensity, and then pass the combined image through the Gaussian filter. Depending on the intensity of the previous image, this motion blur can produce a soft and natural effect, or a more intense and abstracted image.
Organic Motion Camera:
One major goal of this project, based in artistic representation, is to work on additional ways to translate organic motion from a Kinect Sensor into the presentation of the virtual scene. The most obvious way to alter how a view looks at a scene is to change the camera.
The Organic Camera is to simulate the effect of "free hand" filming, rather than mechanical linear, or steady shots. For the Organic Motion Camera, one hand controls the 3D position of the camera, while the other controls panning and tilting, as well as zooming. Both hand can be used, or only one at a time to simulate tripod or dolly shots.
If you would like to know more about this concept, this video is a pretty decent example of how I film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahn7a8qeAYg&feature=plcp (Dont mind the tone or content, this video is pretty personal, but definitely a relevant basis to the "industrial" side of this project...) -Though it is pretty rough and disorientating at times, I think this style conveys more emotion and depth, and can be much more interesting and effective at presenting information if done well.
The 3D points for the camera control are taken directly from generated skeleton data. The Kinect depth and skeletal data both contain a lot of noise, and are produce quite a lot of shaking and strange movement. I have implemented a simple system to average the last n points from each hand, and if needed, Ill work on other ways of smoothing out this data, while still allowing for quick control.
General Organic Input:
The section of the video where the color and contrast is shifting is to show further use of organic input. For this demo, one hand simply controls the scene brightness, contrast, and saturation. Dynamic variable control with organic input can create some pleasing results, can be interesting, and push the final presentation of the image forward.
Additionally, the motion of the excavator in the video is also produced by organic input. It is easy to see how effective this integration can be for animation control.
To implement these techniques in addition to the Organic Motion Camera, scenes would have to be rendered in layers, where object and camera movements were stored and replayed. Since the camera system simply relies on two 3D Vectors for control, it should be easy to read motion from an array of 3D point transformations. While the entire scene would replay, the user could then control the final coloring of the scene.
Integrating and layering multiple organic input systems will be explored in future development, as well as refining the Organic Camera System
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