Mobile and Web are the key point in teaching computer graphics

This year I have experienced a really difference in my Computer Graphics course. I'm still using processing in my laboratory work, but I have introduced a new unit called 'From Desktop to Mobile and Web'. You can check it out, with my all slides and materials of the course, at http://processing.tk

Any difference from my previous courses ? Many. Students were really more motivated and I have received a brilliant collection of good little projects: games, augmented reality examples, image viewers and so on. Why were my students so motivated ? Because they were able to port their processing application to Android and the Web, using android.processing.org and processing.js.

World is changing, and mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) are going to be the items everybody will desire and buy this year. It is really interesting to offer our students the opportunity of working with these new hardware, and processing allows it. We can make the most of their sensors (accelerometers, magnetometers, camera etc.) when creating a game or app.

New ways of reading books

Following my previous post, here another example on how iPad and the new tablet devices are going to change the way we read, learn and interact with books and magazines:

Multitouch devices and education

We have been discussing a lot about the possibilities of multitouch interfaces, speculating about their real advantages over traditional interaction paradigms.

But now, with the current explosion of the iPad and a huge assortment of new multitouch tablet devices to come, we have now real and fully functional applications.

The example of the following video is really very representative. It's really a good example on how these new devices, multitouch enabled, with the new refreshing way of approaching to user interfaces, can undoubtely change fields such as education, magazines, books etc.

AR at SkyNews

A very interesting AR demo from Total Immersion at SkyNews. Visit this specialised AR French company website for additional online demos and videos.

Without any doubt, Augmented Reality is becoming more and more popular.

Do you want to learn processing ?

Very nice set of 5 tutorials with which you can follow an introduction to processing.
In the last one, a final little demo is generated using input audio and displaying the different band levels in an interesting fading effect.

Created by switchboard (Andy Best).

Processing Tutorial #1 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #2 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #3 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #4 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Processing Tutorial #5 from Switchboard on Vimeo.

Another video about the future of AR

Another nice video about the future of Augmented Reality (AR). We're talking about AR a lot lately, thanks to the fact that we are enjoying real applications (iPhone and Android phones, e.g.)

I wonder when we will be able to have those glasses.

(Thanks to Jordi Tormo for the link)

The continuous evolution of processing

From the very beginning, processing was created as a development platform with one objective in mind: generative/procedural art. And this objective is a reality not only because of the tools this language offers, but because some additional libraries some developers are providing to this open community.

People from toxiclibs and their incredible set of libraries for processing is an example.

In the following video you can see a showreel of some of the works created using processing and toxiclibs libraries:

toxiclibs showreel from postspectacular on Vimeo.

A very good BBC article about AR applications

With the title Mobile phones get cyborg vision, BBC describes the present and future of some current Augmented Reality applications. It is worth seeing it.

Some interesting videos about the history of CGI

Looking for new material for my students I have found some interesting videos about the history of CGI (Computer Generated Images).

This first one summarizes the use of CGI in the film industry:



The second and third, two parts of the same, describe the evolution of CGI from its beginning to nowadays:



Click here for the second part of the documentary.

An online Augmented Reality application really useful

Although we have been able to see a lot of Augmented Reality (AR) applications recently, some even online (based on Flash, for example), it is not common to see some real useful examples. I mean, examples where the use of the AR is really interesting and contributes to the final product.

A good example of this is the U.S. Postal Priority Mail with its Virtual Box application. Visit their website, and see the demo video to get the final idea.

"Which box fits your shipment?" By using AR, the user can print a pattern, and can visually explore if the different box sizes are or not appropriate for the object the user want to send. The boxes are visualized with transparency, so they can visually compare the size of the object to send vs. the box. Great and useful.

'We' are the interface !

It's really impressive what Microsoft is preparing under the codename 'Project Natal'.

Is this the Wii killer ? I don't know but if it works as in the demo, we are going to go beyond the actual standards ...

Envisioning the future ...

If there's something really difficult is to predict the future. Microsoft has tried to do it in this video.
What it seems true is that pervasive computing and advanced GUI are going to be an essential key.

Enjoy the video ... what's your opinion ?

<a href="http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;from=shared" target="_new" title="Future Vision Montage">Video: Future Vision Montage</a>

Two interesting OpenGL links

Although I'm not working on OpenGL recently, I have just found today two interesting links.

When I have to develop in C++ and OpenGL, I have to do it normally for Windows, so I have to deal with MFC and OpenGL. I have a sort of an initial template, but it is much better to let the VS 2008 wizard to allow us to create an initial OpenGL + MFC project. Thanks to Dave Kerr we have here how.

From time to time, I also develop in C# and it is always interesting to use OpenGL. There are several alternatives, but SharpGL seems to be all the majority of us need. Here a brief article about it.

Kodu: a new game programming environment for kids

Game programming has always been considered one of the most difficult programming fields. As a computer graphics lecturer and a former game programmer, when I was a teenager actually, I can not say the opposite.

Processing is an excellent framework for those interested in developing games without having to use more low-level API's or development environments.

XNA, visit this and this, is perhaps the perfect choice if you want to use a specific API for computer game development. It is based on .NET and has the additional advantage of letting the game to be deployed directly into a Xbox console.

Thinking basically in new developers, beginners and those who do not want to know anything about programming, Microsoft is about to launch Kodu.

Kodu is not just a game, is a game generator. Using a graphical language, it offers the opportunity to develop computer games without a single line of code.

It is better to see it in action:




Kodu has been created by Microsoft. The project web site can be found here.

QuickHandNote - A note-taking application

I'm a digital tablet user and I love tablet PC's. When I was a Windows user, OneNote was my tool of choice. Now, using mainly Linux and Mac OS, I have to say I have not found something similar. So, I decided to develop my own tool: QuickHandNote.

QuickHandNote is a project which objective is the creation of a notetaking application especially designed for teaching purposes, thinking overall in electronic whiteboards, digital tablets and tablet pcs.

I have developed it using processing with Eclipse. Actually, this project is an experiment about the real possibilities of processing in the development of real applications.

You are invited to test and cooperate: http://sourceforge.net/projects/quickhandnote/

It will be fantastic to receive suggestions or bugs. At the sourceforge site of the project, you can find a tracker, called 'Bugs', where you can post any suggestion or bug of yours.

I have tested it in Mac OS, Linux and Windows. The only drawing tool is a handwriting one, but I'm preparing now much more. The results can be saved in a XML format file and can be also exported to PDF.

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.

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):

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.

Tangible user interfaces and music

The Music Technology Group (Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona) specializes in audio processing technologies and their music and multimedia applications.

Among several research projects, I have found a very interesting one: reactable (see http://mtg.upf.edu/reactable/)

reactable, as you can see in the following videos, is characterized by the use of a Tangible User Interface in the production of sounds and music.







Don't lose the opportunity to test this software. It's open source. You can get it here.

At reactable website, there's also a fantastic collection of similar projects, all with videos ready to be enjoyed. See them here.

Intelligent interfaces in CAD

Have you ever worked with a 3D CAD system ? It is really time consuming... In order to get some results, you need a lot of time.

New AI techniques can provide very interesting results to this problem. A solution can be the use of handwork or sketches as input in those systems. The problem is however, how can these sketches be transformed into technical and accurate geometry.

GIDeS++ is a good example. From the authors we can read the following:

With the advent of new interaction techniques and supporting hardware we should look beyond traditional WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers) interfaces. Mouse and keyboard are by far the most widespread input devices and have been around for a good many years. However, before these, designers have been using pen and paper for an even longer period. GIDeS++ is a tool that adopts the paper-and-pencil metaphor to bridge the gap between designers’ and modellers’ innate ability at freehand drawing and the more elaborate and structured methods required by traditional CAD systems. GIDeS++ offers handwriting recognition for both gestures and measures, combined speech recognition as an alternative to floating toolbars and a set of innovative, simple and efficient tools that allow for quick prototyping and modification of three-dimensional shapes.

In the following video, a bit long but very interesting, you can see the product in action:



You can get more information of this system here. In this website, you can enjoy with more videos and even to download the product itself. Inevo is the company behind.