The Brief
The producers of North One Television approached 3D creative services company Inition, asking us to provide the technical expertise for an ambitious 'virtual presenter' challenge.
Solution
Inition helped presenter Suzi Perry to win the ‘virtual presenter’ challenge (Season 15, Episode 4) in which she and Jon were invited to find the best way to present the show without actually being in the studio. Whilst Jon commissioned an android version of himself and placed it in the studio to take his place, Suzi came to Inition to make use of our motion capture technology.
Based on real-time 3D animation software Autodest MotionBuilder, LILA is Inition’s markerless motion capture solution which can provide show stopping interactive installations for brands, exhibitions, tours and marketing agencies.
Using LILA, Inition were able to capture the motion of Suzi in London and transmit this data to Birmingham to drive an avatar which was composited in the Gadget Show studio, all in real time.
Without any calibration required, Suzi stepped into the holo-deck style cube at Inition’s London studios where her silhouette was tracked by 14 x2D cameras. No markers or any special clothing were required. The vision processor software calculated a 3D mesh of her body from these views and a digital skeleton was applied using the Organic Motion plugin.
The frame-by-frame motion co-ordinates from the data were transmitted to the MotionBuilder system at North One TV studios via a special driver which then applied Suzi’s features- including clothes, hair, skin tones etc. The avatar of Suzi was composited into the studios of The Gadget Show next to the real co-presenter Otis and the android version of Jason Bradbury.
Suzi’s avatar character included full face expressions and mouth shapes driven by her voice, fed through LILA’s voice recognition software. The composited footage was sent back to Inition’s Shoreditch studios via Skype which Suzi could monitor on a screen, seeing exactly what the public would see.
Results
This project posed several challenges, not least because of the processing power required to deliver the avatar in real time. This was the first time a motion capture system had been used to drive another avatar over the Internet. By chosing to approach Inition for help, Suzi beat Jason's android by 16 points to just 12.
Based on the success of this project, North One Television decided to invite Inition to help create fun and innovative crowd games to be played at Gadget Show Live, a consumer event based on the television show. Read more about this here.
The LILA motion capture is a complete attention grabbing solution which is available for events, promotions and exhibitions. As well as hire of the LILA system itself, Inition also provide a complete production service with the hardware, software, and creative design of the characters, environments and interactions.
Ford C-MAX Launch Outdoor Augmented Reality Campaign
Inition Brings Mass Interaction to the Gadget Show Live
MagicSymbol Augmented Reality Application Launches Audi A1 Across UK
Ford C-MAX Campaign: AR with Gestural Interface
The Ford C-MAX augmented reality campaign ran for two weeks across ten shopping malls with over 125,000 curious shoppers interacting with Ford’s Grand C-MAX vehicle. A selection of on-screen icons allowed participants to explore various features of the car including 'Door Slide', 'Seating', 'Power Tail' and 'Spin' with a 'Minority Report' style gesture-controlled interface.
The Brief
The brief from Ford demanded us to track users in the most natural way possible to allow them to 'play' with an interactive product advert. No markers or other symbols could be relied on. It also had to ignore people walking past while allowing precise control and selection from the interface.
FORD C-max DOOH AR campaign from Inition on Vimeo.
Solution
Inition were approached by digital production company Grand Visual who asked if this was possible and thanks to our recent distribution agreement for the Panasonic D-Imager (a Microsoft Kinect-like depth or Z camera) we provided a simple proof-of-concept demo within one day which secured the project.
Over the next few weeks, our in house team of C++ developers developed an application based on OpenFrameWorks and OpenCV SDKs to code the real-time sensing and video display engine. A sophisticated blob tracking and depth thresholding algorithm sensed the participant's hands allowing the car to follow the user's movements. A flocking algorithm gave a fluid, graceful movement around the screen with the optimum amount of 'bounce'. Full HD resolution, portrait graphics, webcam capture, depth and video camera aspect matching and alignment, gestural user interface, interaction logging for usage analysis and hardware fault tolerance were added before going live.
Fine Tuning and Feedback at Every Stage- An important part of the project was the ability to "fine tune" and "play" with all the control parameters via an on-screen interface. On-screen debugging and depth camera modes allowed us to optimise every aspect of the interaction experience. Our development team provided regular “work in progress” videos and executable versions for the client allowing feedback to be incorporated at every stage.
Inition were present for repeated on-site testing with JCDecaux prior to deployment to ensure the software could cope with the rigours of the real-world environment. Issues included reflection scatter from glass shop windows which were tackled with temporal and contrast filtering of the depth image.
Results
- Across ten shopping malls 125,000 customers interacted with Ford's Grand C-MAX vehicle.
- Check out the video to see the installation in action!