Anima

We’ve been doing tests with 3 popular 3D scanners here at work.

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So here’s a quick way to scale a GameObject with a slider (in C#)
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note: some of these might also work with Intel’s RealSense dev kit.

1) keyboard hands
It’s a nuisance to type while wearing VR goggles. So mount a Leap device over/near you keyboard, so you can see your hands when they get close. Letting people type reliably without lifting the goggles will be a much appreciated step forward. (when i try to think of productivity VR apps, they’re limited by not being able to type notes).

+ With ReVive you’re walking around a space. just leave your computer keyboard in the space, and let Leap give you an idea of where your fingers are when you get close enough. Maybe 3D print a stand to hold the two hand joysticks, which has Leap mounted on front, so you have a spatial sense of where to go for these options.

+ if it catches on, maybe Leap could sell a simple IR reflective dotted sheet of clear plastic, which users could tape to wall, or their belly, etc. so they could have a keyboard(s) wherever they want, without the clunky physical limits.

+ maybe you could let people cut the cord off some old cheap discarded keyboard, and use it again in VR. (so it’s dead. just there to offer the feel of it’s keys. but VR + Leap makes it come to life again).

quick list of ideas for Apps we could make for VR goggles:
(feel free to add your own here at the top, or in the comments)

7) Instructional Dining
We have a tool to help IDs keep track of all their current cours. maybe we could make more of a spatial (360) space to help them see and sort them. Maybe benefit would be endless screen space (no more scrolling), and maybe a variety of helpful ways to sort them. Maybe each ID could store their arrangements, and share with each other for a bit of team building (insight into how others do things). Maybe this could build off the existing database backend work.
(maybe we could pull in teacher’s posted office hours? or ntoe their past preferences for audio recording times, to build a visualization of where the density lies?)

+ maybe it could have a fine dining aesthetic, to tie into the chef hat costuming at last year’s Faculty Forum. Go for elegance? treat class planning like recipes? a strong metaphor always helps!
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until we set up a new dedicated blog, Warren, Nick, and Mark are hoping to use this dusty old place to house all the innovative ideas we come up with, and all the cool research we hear about around campus.

You are welcome to contribute. If you have an account, you can edit exist posts (otherwise, leave a comment). If you post new things, please tag them with “ideas,” “research,” or “tech.” (so that we can easily find them later, and maybe export to a separate blog)

So for now, Anima is no longer about “Animation advice and advocacy.” New snooty tagline in place.

Name idea, per Nick = “Glom,” or some use thereof. (MS)

Couldn’t import MP3s we recorded. I saved them out of Adobe Audition CC. but had to resave them in Adobe Encorder CC, or Flash CC would give me this error “Couldn’t Import [path/]” when I tried to import to library.

Turns out the solution was to change Audition’s “Sample Type” (in the “Save As…” dialogue) so that “sample rate” was 44100 Hz instead of the default 48000 Hz.

just thought it worth noting here, in case it comes up again.

I’ve skipped past the History Brush in Photoshop for years. Today I stumbled across 3 cool uses (and was then frustrated that I couldn’t find any quick youtube tutorials on it). Also, recorded a quick camtasia video, to practice the process.
http://youtu.be/y-S9B5Bwles
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I gave up on exporting Adobe Flash movies years ago, for two reasons. Because the final movie looked so fuzzy / bad / compressed, and because my movieclips didn’t play at all (I thought i’d have to do every animation as new keyframes, with no repeated clips). I’ve figured out both of these problems (and will include export settings below).
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I know you can snap a camera to a curve, but wondered how you’d handle switching between 2 curves. Here are two solutions:
http://www.creativecrash.com/forums/animation/topics/one-camera-attached-to-two-motion-paths

(a script to decide which motion path drives translation during which frames, or just keying the level of influence from multiple constraints).
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here’s a cool quick tutorial Calvin found:
http://cg.tutsplus.com/tutorials/autodesk-maya/animating-grass-and-flowers-using-paint-effects-in-maya/

Quick example after the break: 
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