Virtual Marionette

Performance Animation LAB. at Cinanima 2013 (Espinho/Portugal) – Animation Film Festival

The main objective of this Lab is to disseminate Digital Puppetry as a methodology to create performance animation.
We present our methodology based on simple steps: Create->Rig->Map->Animate

November 2013

Reel with CINANIMA 2013 labs

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Result animation from the performance animation Lab at CINANIMA 2013 (Animation Film Festival in Espinho/Portugal).
Real-time storytelling and live directing with virtual marionettes using digital interfaces to create performance animation.
This play was performed with three digital puppeteers / actors and one director.

Framework:
Hardware used: 2 Wiimotes and 2 Nunchucks; 1 Microsoft Kinect; 1 Ipad, 1 Macbook DualCore 2005; VideoProjector
Software used: Animata, Pure Data, Osceleton, Osculator, TouchOSC.

November 2013
www.virtualmarionette.grifu.com

Multitouch surface testing (FTIR)
The purpose of this tests is to build a puppetBox, a multitouch surface to manipulate puppets using fingers.
I´ve made silicone layers with synthetic and cellular diluent.
Avoid dissolving the silicone with cellular diluent because it will take too much time to try. Using synthetic diluent
Of-course you can use expensive materials to avoid this issues.

Material used:
– Optoma projector PK320 80 Ansi Lumen
– EyeCam Default lens with 850 nm filter (i changed the lens to the default because i used a very small surface)
– InfraRed Ledstrip 850 nm
– Baking paper with 2 layers of silicon + synthetic diluent
– CCV 1.2 on MAC and CCV 1.3 on Windows
Conclusions:
Systems:
– Eyecam gives a better performance in Windows (60 fps) against Mac OSX (30 fps)
– Flash CCV demos work 2 times faster on windows compared to Mac OSX
Screens:
– Rosco screen gives high resolution picture and it gives you a great feeling to touch
– Baking paper gives brighter picture with low resolution but it is very low-cost
– Rosco screen needs more layers of Sillicon to track blobs

Experiment made in September 2013