Jitter works brilliantly when it comes to processing signal - and that means for signal-like work with video and textures, it’s fantastic, as well as the usual Max-y tasks like processing input from physical sensors and input devices and the like. But try to do a whole lot of sophisticated 3D work, and Jitter may not be the best tool. For game-style 3D graphics and interaction, you want some standardized rendering and scene graph tools to take care of the hard work, plus physics and other capabilities that bring together your 3D scene.

That’s why [myu], the Max - Unity Interoperability Toolkit, looks so appealing. It not only allows for bi-directional data integration (via TCP) of Max and the Unity game engine, but can dynamically pass textures between the two. For those of you comfortable patching, say, chains of shader processors in Jitter, that means you can very quickly add some of the tasty 3D scene powers of Unity. Put together your textures in Jitter, and, say, dynamically process input from a Wii Fit balance board, then bring the input data and textures into Unity. (Unity is a friendly, elegant game engine built in C# and Novell’s open-source Mono implementation of Microsoft’s .net. Unity had previously been Mac-only but with a major new release now runs on Mac and Windows.)

The toolkit is the result of research at Virginia Tech Interactive Sound & Intermedia Studio director Dr. Ivica Ico Bukvic.

Needless to say, this could have powerful implications for all kinds of live and interactive installation applications. And yes, it is all released under the GPL.

[myu] Max-Unity Interoperability Toolkit v.1.0 Released [Cycling '74 Forum]

More Max+Unity Game Engine Goodness, with Powerful Toolkit for Max, Jitter, Pd

Teaching Adaptive Music with Games: Unity + Max/MSP, Meet Space Invaders!

For other examples of combining Max and Unity - in this case for Max’s musical powers and Unity’s gaming prowess - see another story from today:

Teaching Adaptive Music with Games: Unity + Max/MSP, Meet Space Invaders! [Create Digital Music]

Updated: About those textures…

Ico follows up to answer our questions about how you might use textures with Jitter and the Unity Game Engine, via his [myu] toolkit:

pymt demo reel from Thomas Hansen on Vimeo.

Today on Create Digital Music, I have a look at tasty, drool-worthy free multitouch frameworks, one for Max/MSP patchers and one for Python coders:

Roll Your Own Multitouch Screens, Tables: Max Multitouch Framework, PyMT

I’m curious, though: who out there is already employing multitouch interfaces in their live visual work? Particularly for working with 3D (albeit with gestures on a 2D plane), I imagine this could be powerful stuff. Obviously, we have quite a few iPhone/iPod touch users, but anyone using bigger devices? How do you integrate multitouch for your work — painting? 3D space navigation?

Aside from cool aesthetic effects, projection mapping (mapping projection precisely onto real-world objects) and augmented reality (what you get when you add digital projections to your reality) can be useful.

So, while we’ve already seen plenty of projections on walls and floors, this is a projection on a climbing wall. It might seem silly, but climbers use other means of keeping track of which way to go. This provides multiple paths on the same wall without extraneous information. It’s a wall that can actually help teach you to climb, without someone at the bottom shouting at you. From the description:

iOO Climb turns every ordinary climbing wall into an augmented and interactive climbing experience. Thousands of boulders and routes can now be saved on a single wall, and browsed and played using a single remote control. Climbers can thus focus on their climbing experience, forgetting numbered stickers and colored stripes. Climbing routes are displayed only where and when it is needed.

Via Hacked Gadgets, and sent our way by Drew Atienza. (Thanks!)

I’m bad enough at climbing that I could probably use some projections giving me digital encouragement. Create Digital Exercise, anyone?

MSA Remote for iPhone from Memo Akten on Vimeo.

Apple, apparently unclear on what multitouch clients actually are, have chosen to reject Memo Akten’s brilliant-looking MSA Remote client for the iPhone/iPod touch. The free(!) app could empower installations and performances with the standard multi-touch protocol TUIO, as used on the Reactable (and, thus, by Bjork, among many other folks).

This is, sadly, the kind of second-guessing developers Apple has been doing far too much. But it’s also clear that Apple is a company that listens - when people shout and complain and gripe. So in that spirit, I’m shouting and complaining and griping, on the more-trafficked music site:

Apple Rejects Free iPhone Tool For Artists Because of “Minimal User Functionality”

Please help us by spreading the word. Apple’s mobile device is too good to let it be crippled by bad judgment. And it’s equally important to say, loudly, vendor restrictions are not a feature. I hope that promising platforms like Google’s Android benefit from their comparative openness, because I believe it makes a different to art - not for philosophical reasons, but for concrete, practical ones. And this is a perfect example.

“This is my tree. It makes music.”

It took “actual 12-year-old girl” (as Microsoft described her) Sparrow to rescue Microsoft’s drab CES keynote (and drab tech news week) and get us back into the Future again. That future is one in which the dazzling interactive 3D world of games becomes a playground you can shape. In this case, the showpiece is a game called Kodu, but that may just be the beginning. The reason all of this is so deeply significant is that what you need to make something work for kids could say a lot about how the rest of us will work with 3D interfaces, including for making art, performance, and expression.

From Channel 10, here are a couple of priceless demos of Sparrow using the tool. It seems scripted as first – and then you realize the “grups” are just trying to keep up with the kid. Sparrow, can you do the entire Microsoft keynote next year? I bet you’re already running Windows 7 beta anyway. (You’ll need Silverlight for the video – this is Microsoft — but it’s been running well for me these days.)