Thursday, October 4, 2007

Visualization Design Institute and Immersion Studio at Sheridan College

We had our first field-trip at school today! We went to the far off reaches of the fourth floor of our building to the Visualization Design Studio. VDI is a computer visualization and simulation research group at Sheridan College. The two main areas of interest that came out of this trip were the facial recognition and the immersion studios.

The FACE (Facial Animation Communication Engine) research was quite impressive. You can see more detail about this project on the VDI website. In a nutshell the research aims to, using a simple webcam, recognize a face and track and recreate it's movement on a computer generated model. At this point they are able to track only basic head movements but as the research progresses the intention is to add the ability to track finer movements such as lip and eye motion. Having observed the work to date I was impressed with the lack of lag in the program. It appeared to be able to follow the subject without any noticeable delay. This could have use in the field of special effects and animation. It would simplify the motion capture process by eliminating markers and special suits that have to be worn by the actor. If the application is refined enough it could lead to extremely realistic and naturally animated facial motion. There have been some breakthrough’s in markerless motion capture but even this more refined method still involves covering whatever surface is being captured (be it skin or fabric or whatever) in some sort of phosphorescent ‘make-up’ in order for the process to work. The research started with the FACE project may at some point even do away with this requirement as it becomes more sophisticated and polished. I think there is entertainment value potential with this technology as well. From something simple like creating a customizable animated avatar for online VOIP/Webcam chats to a more interactive gaming environment. If this technology at some point is able to read fine and detailed facial movements then I imagine it can be extended to read entire body movements. The type of interaction now offered by the a game console such as the Wii could perhaps be extended even more to allow the user to interact with their entire body.

The now defunct Immersion Studio showed us how user interaction can be used with video branching to enhance the experience of something like a movie. Basically the viewer is given an input device (in this case a tablet PC) and while the movie plays at certain points the user is requested to make a choice that will affect the outcome of the movie. Based on this choice the program selects which branch of video to follow. Essentially it is the "Choose your own adventure" of the movie world. Partially due to the cost of the equipment needed to run this setup it seems to not have caught on. For some reason I keep envisioning this at an amusement park next to the “Action FX Theatre” where your seat moves (in theory) in response to what you see on the movie screen in front of you (frankly my experiences with this ride led more to motion sickness than to any sort of excitement and/or fun). On the less-fun-more-educational side I can see the immersion technology being extremely beneficial. It would be a great way to create tutorials that are more immersive and experiential. Branching the video to show the outcome of the users decisions could make for a very effective learning experience. Some of the potential uses of this technology can be seen here.

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