An introductory course to processing.org

I've been teaching an introductory course to computer graphics for some years. The subject lectures are taught in one semester (2 hours per week) and with fifteen laboratory sessions of one hour.

From this year on, I have decided to use processing as the framework for the laboratory sessions.

The experience has demonstrated the many advantages of processing in this field. Students are able to work from the very beginning and the introduction to the different topics is seamless. Students do not spend too much time in learning development environments, initial code templates, languages or tools that are only interesting for educational purposes.

Everything that students develop can be reused, improved and is able to be part of a final application. The level of complexity is gradual, from just writing some sentences of code to C-like programs (a collection of functions) to complete object-oriented applications.

Based on Java, with a comprehensive graphic library, inspired in PostScript and OpenGL, and thousands of users, processing is a serious alternative to other approaches. With its use, I have managed to cover more computer graphics topics in our laboratory sessions, to help our lectures at the classroom and to capture student interest in a more effective way.

You have the complete slides of the laboratory sessions I have prepared in this website.

Try Augmented Reality on-line !

In my profile, you can see a photo of mine I took using ARToolKit.

Based on ARToolKit, at Boffswana web-site, you can enjoy a complete example of an AR application based on optical tracking without having to install anything.

It's really very funny and easy to use (if you use a Mac, read the instructions carefully).

The example was developed using FLARToolkit which, at the same time, is based on NyARToolkit (a Java/C#/Android ARToolKit wrapper without native code).

An example with myself again:

Hug a developer

Funny but completely true ...

Wii Fit - There's no limits in Nintendo's imagination

Wii fit is going to be the next Nintendo's toy everybody is going to talk about, and the truth is that it seems there's no limits for the range of possibilities we're going to enjoy with it.

It's not the future, it's the present. The conception of computer game is continuously reinvented by Nintendo.

Enjoy the video:

An amazing 2D physics game

Visit Kloonigames web site and enjoy a very simple but effective 2D physics game. It's perfect for children (and those not so child...)

See a fantastic video of it with a tablet pc (although a tablet is not required to play with it):

Another nice look to the future - UMPC

Uhmm... again, a refreshing new look to what Ultra Mobile technology will be able to offer us in a near future ...

Microsoft Surface - selling old things as new ones

Microsoft is now presenting Microsoft Surface. The web site is really beautiful, the videos fantastic, the marketing impressive... as usual. However, the product they show is not new. In previous posts you can see similar products.

But it is always interesting to see how Microsoft is able to get previous ideas, remake them, and sell them in a way they can reach everyone. It's Microsoft, and one of the advantages is that thanks to them the ones like me, who love these new interaction devices, are going to have more chances to purchase these products.

Explore the Microsoft Surface website, it's very interesting.

Here, some videos of this 'new' product. Thanks again to Jordi Camarasa for this information.


Microsoft Surface Computing - The Possibilities



Details Of MS Surface

Open - A wonderful word ...

I really enjoy the adjective open. When applied to computer science topics is something that only offers advantages.

I'm not going to describe here the good things we have in open source solutions, and how incredible to visit sourceforge is in order to get almost everything you need but with an open license and with source code.

Recently, I'm enjoying with another application of the world open to lecturing. A fantastic example is the MIT. They have opened almost all the material they use in their courses, and believe me, they are worthwhile (go here). They have incredible lectures notes and even videos. I personally love the videos you can follow in subjects like Introduction to Algorithms. They are very useful and interesting.

Visit and enjoy the MIT OpenCourseWare and take the most of it !

A morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces

Although it is something not new, I show you a video of a morphable model for the synthesis of 3D faces presented by Volker Blanz and Thomas Vetter. You can see more information of their work at here and here.

Pay attention to the last part of the video, when this technique is applied to real images, being able to reconstruct the head and finally being able to modify the original image. The results are much better that the classical 2D image warping techniques.

Another video about multi-touch screens

I have found another excellent video on multi-touch screens (thanks to Jordi Camarasa), where Jeff Han and Phil Davidson (see their website) demonstrate this technology is really very useful.

Enjoy it.