C4D CamGripTools from Cinema 4D Tutorials on Vimeo.

Deride the mouse as you will. When it comes to two-dimensional control, the device is pretty amazing. It’s a reasonable way of amplifying small hand gestures into bigger gestures on a 2D plane. But what about 3D interfaces? Suddenly, the mouse becomes like playing charades, telling someone else what to do in a universe with an extra dimension.

What you need is interfaces that make sense in 3D. Some of these interfaces are out there; the missing link has been intelligent connections to software. To see how powerful this can be, look no further than Camera GripTools, a motion capture system for Maxon’s Cinema 4D modeling tool.

It works with a variety of devices:

• Behringer BCF2000 MIDI fader panel (already a popular controller among VJs/visualists)
• Nintendo’s Wiimote
• Joysticks
• Track IR 4 Pro is a head-mounted tracker for head movements. Pricing starts at just US$120, so this is absolutely a solution for mortals, and it appears to work really well – with 120 FPS tracking.
• Polhemus Patriot VR Tracker – I’d never seen this before, and it looks utterly brilliant. It’s a six degrees of freedom tracker / 3D digitizer, made up of a small sensor. And it’s only £ 1,985 … oh. Okay, never mind.

Camera GripTools [via Derrick Belcham of visuuals.com – check out his site for some gorgeous work]

For Cinema 4D users, this looks absolutely invaluable. It supports XPresso, CInema 4D’s fantastic modular, visual programming environment, with drag-and-drop support for objects. The free demo version is already pretty usable, with more powerful versions running EUR99-499 (though sadly you need the EUR499 version for full hardware support).

But I think the bigger message is how controllable this makes the 3D environment. This could be fantastic in an open source environment like Blender, or for live control in Blender, visual tools like VDMX, and custom creations in vvvv, Jitter, Processing, and the like. And while it may not be possible to make a system as accurate as the Patriot, looking at what they’re doing I suspect it should be possible to do a “ghetto” version on the cheap. (You know I’m all about that.)

Discuss.

Fractice Whorld from Jeff Mission on Vimeo.

Fractal-generating software was once all the rage. But fractal geometry is as compelling and organic as ever. And newly-released Fractice software is not only free, but has some unique features that make it worth a look – particularly real-time control for live visuals – and that bring fractal software into the year 2009:

• Anti-aliasing
• Deep zoom (a natural feature for fractals)
• Multicore and distributed processing
• Movie recording
• Live visual controls: mixing, mirroring, origin motion, palette tweening, dual-monitor support, and MIDI

Where this gets even more interesting is that our friend Jeff Mission, maker of the generative, Wiimote-controllable software WiiWhorld, has written scripts allowing you to control Fractice with gestures on your Nintendo Wii remote. The video at top shows what happens when you blend Fractice as a background layer with Jeff’s own generative creations in WiiWhorld.

Jeff writes:

We’ve had a lot of fun working on this over the past several months, and putting it through its paces at some local events.  Like Chris’ other software, it’s open-source and free to all.

Fractice is software by Chris Korda:

http://fractice.sourceforge.net/

And to connect your Wiimote, you can use this script, in conjunction with the free, powerful game controller-mapping software for Windows, GlovePIE:

FractalBasic.PIE

GlovePIE

I’d still like to see people push fractals in different aesthetic directions, but I find this fascinating, nonetheless. Curious to see what folks do with it.

What if virtual reality and seamless three-dimensional interfaces arrived, and they turned out to be a lot simpler technologically than you imagined? Well, perhaps you know a technology is within reach when it can not only be implemented, but implemented in a way that’s elegant and lightweight.

The latest in the ongoing YouTube-able head-tracking and 3D-manipulation videos is this creation by Timo Fleisch at the Center of Technology and Art Berlin. He has lots of resources on XNA programming, as well; thanks to a C# library, XNA and Wii mix nicely on the PC. (Less so on the Xbox 360 for obvious reasons, but XNA makes a lovely development framework for 3D on the PC, not just the console.)

http://www.vrhome.de/ [link is incorrect on the YouTube page]

The idea is pretty easy to grasp:

• 2 Wii remotes, basically acting as simple near-infrared-spectrum tracking cameras (which means, in fact, you could substitute something else if you really wanted)
• Head tracking, via emitters on glasses, as first widely popularized in a Wii video by Carnegie Mellon’s Johnny Lee
• Polarized 3D glasses, for 3D perception (and Coraline fans, natch)
• A 4-LED “LED Beacon” which allows three-dimensional manipulation of objects on the screen.

As a performance or interaction interface, I actually find the head tracking to be a bit awkward, especially as you’re still looking at a flat screen. But I love the manipulation via the “beacon.” I think there’s a lot that can be done to make manipulation of 3D spaces and objects more intuitive and more gestural - and naturally, that could lead to some lovely 3D performance tools, too (not to mention making modeling 3D objects less of a pain).

Stay tuned, same VR time, same VR channel.

Found via Veronica Pejril on Twitter.

eMotion+Wiimote in IR mode from Adrien Mondot on Vimeo.

eMotion, an all-Cocoa Mac app, is now available as alpha donationware, and it’s capable of some stunning, particle-based visuals. Wave around a Wiimote, and get satisfying swirls of particles – even if they send a chill down my spine as I sit here in snowy Chicagoland.

Creator Adrien Mondot of Grenoble, France practices juggling and dance as well as programming, and it shows. He has some nice ideas about the software that I think could inspire other, similar directions. As he describes it:

eMotion is a tool for creating interactive motions of objects for live visual performances.

Electronic motion seems often artificial, synthetic… well… in fact it does not convey any emotions. By defining new rules to create movements, eMotion is a new kind of software made for visual live animations.

As it is based on real world physics law, all motions seems natural, full of emphasis.

It allows to manipulate different kind of objects like still image, videos, text, drawing.

Targeted mainly for theatre/dance performances, it can be used in broader situations.

In fact, talking about just the tool seems to miss the point of thinking about jugglers, dancers, and dancing pixels. But to summarize quickly, eMotion provides physics-based animation rules, multiple particle systems, and layered, scriptable behaviors. Add Wii, Wacom, MIDI, audio, and OSC inputs to control it with whatever you like.

With eMotion and Animata and Processing and vvvv, we’re seeing a real renaissance in live, performed visuals.

Thanks, Anton!

eMotion Project Page [description, documentation, downloads]

Netzstaub has been pumping out all kinds of great code and projects over on his blog. Here’s an especially sweet example: he’s got Processing working with a basic headtracking process. The input involves oscp5 and netp5 used with the Mac-only DarwiinRemoteOSC library, but could be adapted to other operating systems.

Wiimote Headtracking in Processing via wesen’s Twitter (follow CDM at Twitter: cdmblogs)

Once the data is there, the rest is basically math. You position the camera to look straight ahead, and then adjust the viewing angle based on incoming data.

The sketch is available, so go try it — and see if further improvements or other applications are possible.

In case you aren’t already familiar with it, here’s the now-famous video featuring Wiimote headtracking, by Carnegie Mellon’s Johnny Chung Lee: