Category Archives: Hand tracking

Kinect GUI for Minecraft and others..

3D and game editors, game, Hand tracking, tracking, Virtual Reality, visualisation, , ,

In Semester 1 (March to June) and from July Karen Miller of the Library Makerspace and Information Studies and myself are ‘clients’ for Curtin software engineering students. Their brief is to build a flexible Graphic User Interface (GUI) that connects the Microsoft Kinect 1 camera to various game engines like Minecraft so that non-programmers can easily select and modify their own gestures to a command library in the virtual world/game level.

The forerunner of this project coded by Jaiyi Zhu was cited in the NMC Technology Outlook Horizon Report. Dr Andrew Woods, HIVE manager wrote:

Congratulations Karen Miller, Erik Champion and Jaiyi Zhu on having their work cited in the NMC Technology Outlook Horizon Report < https://t.co/YeZMHU76gI >
This project was supported by the 2015 HIVE Summer Internship Program and I’m very happy this great project and Jiayi’s hard work is being acknowledged. https://maker.library.curtin.edu.au/2016/02/19/minecraft-edu-in-the-library-makerspace/

Ideas on how to adapt Kinect camera tracking for 3D presentations in archaeology

3D and game editors, Academic, Biofeedback, Hand tracking, heritage, HIVE, , , ,

I did not mention all these in my 22 May presentation at Digital Heritage 3D conference in Aarhus (http://conferences.au.dk/digitalheritage/)

But here are some working notes for future development:

How Xbox Kinect camera tracking could change the simulated avatar:

  1. Avatars in the simulated world change their size clothing or inventories – they scale relative to typical sizes and shapes of the typical inhabitants, or scale is dependent on the scene or avatar character chosen.
  2. Avatars change to reflect people picking up things.
  3. Avatars role-play – different avatars see different things in the digital world.
  4. Narrator gestures affect the attention or behavior of the avatar.

How Xbox Kinect camera tracking could change the simulated world or digital objects in that world:

  1. Multiple players are needed to lift and examine objects.
  2. Objects move depending on the biofeedback of the audience or the presenter.
  3. Interfaces for Skype and Google hangout – remote audiences can select part of the screen and filter scenes or wire-frame the main model.
  4. Levels of authenticity and time layers can be controlled or are passively / indirectly affected by narrator motion or audience motion / volume / infrared output.

Kinect SDK 2 FINGER TRACKING (etc) for Desktops & Large Screens (VR)

3D and game editors, Architecture, Biofeedback, design, Finger Tracking, Hand tracking, HIVE, , , , , , , ,

We are trying to create some applications/extensions that allow people to interact naturally with 3D built environments on a desktop by pointing at or walking up to objects in the digital environment:

or a large surround screen (figure below is of the Curtin HIVE):

using a Kinect (SDK 1 or 2) for tracking. Ideally we will be able to:

  1. Green screen narrator into a 3D environment (background removal).
  2. Control an avatar in the virtual environment using speaker’s gestures.
  3. Trigger slides and movies inside a UNITY environment via speaker finger-pointing Ideally the speaker could also change the chronology of built scene with gestures (or voice), could alter components or aspects of buildings, move or replace parts or components of the environment. Possibly also use Leap SDK (improved).
  4. Better employ the curved screen so that participants can communicate with each other.

We can have a virtual/tracked hand point to objects creating an interactive slide presentation to the side of the Unity environment. As objects are pointed at information appears in a camera window/pane next to the 3D digital environment, or, these info windows are triggered on approach.

A commercial solution to Kinect tracking for use inside Unity environments is http://zigfu.com/ but they only appear to be working with SDK 1. Which is a bit of a problem, to rephrase:

Problem: All solutions seem to be Kinect SDK 1 and SDK 2 only appears to work on Windows 8. We use Windows 7 and Mac OS X (10.10.1).

So if anyone can help me please reply/email or comment on this post.

And for those doing similar things, here are some links I found on creating Kinect-tracked environments:

KINECT SDK 1
Kinect with MS-SDK is a set of Kinect examples, utilizing three major scripts and test models. It demonstrates how to use Kinect-controlled avatars or Kinect-detected gestures in your own Unity projects. This asset uses the Kinect SDK/Runtime provided by Microsoft. URL: http://rfilkov.com/2013/12/16/kinect-with-ms-sdk/
And here is “one more thing”: A great Unity-package for designers and developers using Playmaker, created by my friend Jonathan O’Duffy from HitLab Australia and his team of talented students. It contains many ready-to-use Playmaker actions for Kinect and a lot of example scenes. The package integrates seamlessly with ‘Kinect with MS-SDK’ and ‘KinectExtras with MsSDK’-packages.

NB
KinectExtras for Kinect v2 is part of the “Kinect v2 with MS-SDK“. This package here and “Kinect with MS-SDK” are for Kinect v1 only.

BACKGROUND REMOVAL (leaves just player)
rfilkov.wordpress.com/2013/12/17/kinectextras-with-mssdk/

FINGER TRACKING (Not good on current Kinect for various reasons)

  1. http://www.ar-tracking.com/products/interaction-devices/fingertracking/
  2. Not sure if SDK 1 but FingerTracker is a Processing library that does real-time finger-tracking from depth images: http://makematics.com/code/FingerTracker/
  3. Finger tracking for interaction in augmented environments: Finger tracking for interaction in augmented environments OR https://www.ims.tuwien.ac.at/publications/tr-1882-00e.pdf by K Dorfmüller-Ulhaas – a finger tracker that allows gestural interaction and is sim- ple, cheap, fast … is based on a marked glove, a stereoscopic tracking system and a kinematic 3-d …
  4. Video of “Finger tracking with Kinect SDK” see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrUW-Z3fHkk
  5. Finger tracking using Java http://www.java2s.com/Open-Source/CSharp_Free_Code/Xbox/Download_Finger_Tracking_with_Kinect_SDK_for_XBOX.htm
  6. Microsoft can do it: http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/08/kinect-for-windows-finger-tracking/ Might need to contact them though for info

HAND TRACKING FOR USE WITH AN OCULUS RIFT
http://nimblevr.com/ For use with rift
Download nimble VR http://nimblevr.com/download.html Win 8 required but has mac binaries