3D California

Dear friends of 3D CALIFORNIA,

Demos of brand new AR see-through glasses from Laster Technologies were a huge success at Siggraph 2011 in Vancouver. 400 people could experience a couple of scenarios and they all enjoyed a lot.

Professionals’ and students’ reactions were extermely promising and confirm that business usages can go from maintenance operations to entertainment …

Please click on the picture to see the video :

Send us your comments and questions !

Thank you,

3D CALIFORNIA Team

We had several questions lately, about the use of QR Codes and how it is similar or different to usual augmented reality markers. A couple of elements here may help understand better the topic.

QR Codes are used to spread strings, like URLs

What is a QR Code?

Characters in a text can be coded as bits – zeros and ones – that can then be printed as black and white. Following a specific pattern, we can encode a full string of characters as a set of small black and white squares. This is QR Code (see one example in the picture)

If you want to read a QR Code, some mobile applications will help you do that. Your cell phone camera will read a QR Code and output a string (usually the URL of a website you may visit). Such an app will execute a 2D image analysis, finding the 4 corners of the QR Code which are always the same, and deducing the position of all the squares in the QR Code. There’s no 3D computing, only 2D image analysis.

QR Code or AR Marker?

A QR Code is not an augmented reality (AR) marker. They can look quite the same, but usually AR markers have fewer black and white squares and they are bigger. The aim of AR markers is not to convey a string. An AR application will have the position and orientation of the marker analyzed by a camera, in 3D. The computation is very different. With a QR Code, we read the value of the black and white squares but we don’t assess its position, and we want it to be still during the computation. With AR markers, we recognize a known marker in a set of previously learned ones, plus we get its position and orientation in real time as it moves. Then we usually play interactive 3D animations in real time according to the very position of the marker.

This is an AR Marker with its position outlined in red

Why would a QR Code not be a good AR marker?

A QR Code is usually small. Therefore, the camera needs to be close if we want to read the coded string. The QR Code reading algorithm is very sensitive to movement. Once you stay still for a short moment, and the coded string is recognized, the QR Code has done its job. You don’t want to track it while moving.

AR markers are usually bigger and can be easily tracked with good augmented reality solutions. You don’t have to read or decode it. All you need is to recognize it and then track its movements to render interactive 3D animations accordingly, and in real time. Recent augmented reality advanced solutions have been enabling Markerless Tracking, which does not exactly mean there is no marker at all, but lets us use any image as a marker, like the logo of a company, or a picture, instead of a black and white AR Marker.

What if I want to use a QR Code?

There are plenty of solutions, for example, you could have your Mobile demo downloadable online, and use a QR Code to spread the URL. The actual demo could use any other marker to work with.

Thank you again, and we hope you will have plenty of ideas for projects using computer vision and natural interface technologies. And don’t forget … Zest you ideas with 3D !

Hi. You may not know me yet, as I just joined 3D California. My name is Joachim, I’m a French intern and I’ll do my best to provide frequently some quality articles about Augmented Reality in this blog for all of you, 3D and AR fans.

So, after two or three years of hype, you sure know what Augmented Reality is. Or at least you have a lot of examples in mind. But AR is both the set of technologies and hardware, and what we do out of it. And we keep creating, discovering, and inventing new gadgets and new ways to use them.

The big red curtain that's hiding the magic tricks

As impressive as all these new applications can seem, there’s no such thing as magic. I’d like to take you on a tour to see a few tricks, explain a few technical points, and help you understand how it works, and this is the aim of the series of articles entitled “A quick peek behind the curtain” that I’ll be writing for you on the next weeks. I’m not (yet) a professional; I’m still learning lots of new things everyday and the content of these articles are the results of personal research, visits, discussions and a few years of great interest toward Augmented Reality, its technologies and applications, but it’s a fast moving world. So there might be a few points that are out-of-date, or not quite precise. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. Of course, I’ll do my best to document and source my articles, so that most of what I say can be checked.

Let’s lift that curtain a bit !

Today, I will talk about why the Cyclops from Homer’s Odysseus would not have appreciate James Cameron’s Avatar.

James Cameron’s Avatar

As a huge 3D fan, there’s nothing you appreciate more than this feeling of immersion given by the use of the three dimensions. Of course, today, we can do pretty neat things with a 3D artist and a normal TV or computer screen. And we can see those fantastic models rotate in every direction, just in front of us. But that’s nothing in comparison to what we feel when those models start turning around us. I’m sure that you felt something special when you saw that beast coming right behind your nose. All the trick comes from that obvious fact: unlike Homer’s Cyclops, we have two eyes.

And now for the explanation: our eyes are both able to see. But given that each of them is on one side of the nose (we estimate the distance between the eyes at about 65 millimeters or 2.56 inches), they don’t see exactly the same thing. For objects that are far away, there is no difference (try to watch through the window and close alternatively one eye and the other, and you should see about the same thing). But for objects that are close, this is a different matter (this time, hold a pen a few centimeters in front of you, and close your eyes alternatively again, watching you screen. Depending on which eye is open, the pen is on a completely different location). The left eye sees them on its right, and the right eye sees them on its left. And when the brain gets the 2 images, it’s able to figure out which objects are seen the same way by the two eyes (they are far away) and which objects are different (and thus closer) and estimate their distance.

That said, we still want to get that cool Avatar 3D effect, so… how do we do now? The answer holds in a few words: we simply film with 2 cameras that are distant of about 65 millimeters, and we get 2 different movies: a right eyed one and a left eyed one. And we just have to send the movie to the good eye. Easy to say, isn’t it? There are a few methods for targeting a specific eye with a specific movie, let’s see a few of them.

The anaglyphs :

Definitely gives a strange look...

I bet that you recognize those glasses from, let’s say, the last time you bought cereals. And the images to use with are like that. You know that the colors are combinations of Red, Green and Blue. And when you put a colored filter (like a colored glass or transparent plastic sheet), you only distinguish the other colors. So we keep the red part of the left image, and the blue + green (= cyan) part of the right image, join the 2 images and have you look at it through the glasses. Your left eye has the cyan filtered out, and only sees the red details, and vice versa. ” Et voilà!”. But this long known trick has a problem: you can’t really play with colors anymore, because you use them with stereoscopy.

They are a lot of others techniques that I’ll be explaining in more details next week, including the way Avatar’s 3D was done. Hope you liked that first article. Feel free to give us feedback, reactions, details or simple comments, so that it will get better and better with time!

Have a good week!

Bonus: if you have anaglyph glasses, you can feel again that 3D feeling with the trailer of Avatar in anaglyph 3D

Internet source :

Different website, but all the informations also appear on the Wikipedia article

At CES in Las Vegas (January 2010) the French company Parrot introduced a new flying machine for entertainment, and maybe for other purposes in the future.
It is a drone allowing to explore new experiences, mixing video, game and real world thanks to augmented reality technology.

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Pride is an essential part of a sales job. Being proud to deliver products of services that can change the way people live is a major incentive in a sales guy everyday life. But when it comes to 3D software and products, pride just reaches a new dimension.

3D application vendors are not just regular vendors. 3D apps vendors sell apps that change the way we live. Applications that change the way you live.

Remember, for example, CAD/CAM software ? Such 3D applications have revolutionized the automotive and aeronautics industry. 20 or 30 years before, designers would have to spend hours on paper and pen to create products, engineers would spend days to manufacture those products based on drawings, support engineers would spend month to test products before the sales process begin. In these industries, 3D has just changed the way it goes, from design to manufacturing and support.

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