Via Aaron Meyers, who’s getting ready for some fun projects at Eyebeam here in New York this week, anyone using a camera for capture, live video, or tracking needs to check out this copious thread on the OpenFrameworks forum:

beginners ~ Sony PS3 Eye

We already knew Sony’s US$40 PS3 Eye camera was a wonder; that’s why we strongly recommended its use in the tangible interface hackday hosted earlier this month. But while we’ve heard some good luck squeezing performance out of the thing on Windows and Linux, the Mac - while reliable - could use more options and performance. Theo Watson, one of the OpenFrameworks team, comes to the rescue with a patched version of the macam open source video driver - halfway down the page. (I hope his changes get rolled into macam?)

You’ll find lots of other tips, not only for the Mac but other stuff, as well.

We’ll keep collecting tips on this camera. Macam experiences, anyone? I’m still trying to successfully build the Linux driver; once I sort that out, I’ll share.

Blender 2.5, - Got flexible? from Pablo Vazquez on Vimeo.

In case the last post didn’t give you enough Blender goodness, here’s more for your pleasure.

Version 2.5 is coming of the open source 3D suite that’s also a nodal compositing engine and a video editor and a real-time game engine — basically, a visual operating system in which you can make just about anything. 3D software in general hasn’t been gifted with especially slick interfaces. But 2.5 changes that: check out the elegant pop-up menus and Spotlight-style menu searching. Every little detail can be Python scripted, which sounds geeky but could be an easy way to just tell the software what it is you want to do - and Python is a lovely language to dip your toes into as a beginning coder, too.

All that’s well and good. But the real highlight of the video above is the fact that working in Blender now happens much more in real-time. For those of us used to working with visuals in performance, this means our “studio” workflow can be dynamic and live, too. Whether you render and remix video later, export 3D objects, or move to the Blender Game Engine to take your Blender work onstage, that is likely to appeal to visualists.

And if you’re just getting started, here’s a tutorial on using video textures in the Blender Game Engine, even if you’re new to the whole environment:
Beginner’s tutorial: Using video textures in the Blender Game Engine

Via comments from Samuel Gaehwiler - thanks!

At the moment (<2.5), Blender follows the “do everything in one window” paradigm.
As jeff clermont stated above: Blender 2.5 will be the first blender release which will allow multiple windows. Hopefully, one can show the output of the game engine on one monitor in full screen while manipulating it on the other screen. The new event system in 2.5 might allow some nice possibilities for visualists. Pablo Vazquez has done a nice of manipulating a running animation (in the 3d view), which isn’t possible in Blender <2.5.

Blender, the free and open source 3D modeling tool that’s also a real-time game engine, promises real-time visual performance possibilities, and is even a video editing tool, continues its march toward the long-promised, insanely powerful 2.5 milestone. (”Point five” doesn’t really begin to cover it.)

2.49 is now stable. And boy does it have a heck of a lot going on. There’s nodal texture editing, multiple streams of video playback in the Game Engine (making this especially appealing to visualists), 3D painting, real-time dome rendering in case you’ve got a planetarium gig, faster Game Engine performance, Bullet physics improvements for lots of physics-y goodness, real-time shape modification, and better game logic and Python control and included Python script extensions. And that’s just the start.

Blender 2.49

Basically, Blender has become a full-blown, real-time OpenGL video and graphics powerhouse inside an existing modeling tool. I’m still intrigued by dedicated game engines, but this means your modeling workflow and real-time workflow are one and the same.

And it’s capable, as a result, of some stunning visuals. The video above is from Martin Supitis, who describes it thusly on YouTube:

Few weeks of exploring the magic world of GLSL coding and few days of getting it all in this demo. Here is the result.
The thread in BlenderArtists forums that also contains download links and updates - here:
blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php? t=152343

Made for company Twilight 22 where i take part of creating adventure action game Fire Wire District 22 as concept artist, modeler, now also learning graphic coding.

here is seen final composite of GLSL scene + SSAO, Depth of Field, Light Scattering and Chromatic Aberration filters, captured 30fps in 1680X1050 resolution; 8xAnisotropic filtering and 16xQ Antialiasing.

For live visuals, of course, modeling tools do way more than we might actually want or need. But if you can dive into Blender and find a way to simplify the work to the point you might like for a visual performance, I think it could be an immensely powerful tool.

And then there’s hardware control. Marco Rapino aka Akta has been controlling Blender with the accelerometer in his Nokia N95 phone, as in the video seen here. (Oh yes, I do need to port this to Android, especially as I already have the sensors working.)

N95 acceleremoter in Blender from aktathelegend on Vimeo.

Full details:
N95 accelerometer with Blender [ Akta's Way Blog, via BlenderNation ]

Of course, I’d like to see standardized OpenSoundControl for this sort of application. (Accordingly, OSC may soon lose the “Sound” officially in its title, given its more generalized purpose. Open Systems Control, perhaps? Open Stuff Control? Open Smurf Control?)

There’s been at least one paper on the topic of combining Blender with Pd for sound (”Blendnik”):
http://porcaro.org/blendnik.html

I’m not sure of the preferred way to implement OSC inside Python inside Blender, but I’ll have to give this a try myself.

A huge thanks to Giorgio Martini aka Tweaking Knobs for these links. Giorgio is working on his own live project. Here’s a glimpse of what that looks like, in progress:

Untitled from TweakingKnobs on Vimeo.

You can go grab Blender for basically any operating system you can imagine.

What happens when digital cinematography meets a favorite desktop video editing app for mortals? When our friend Nathanaël Lécaudé, also a talented multitouch developer, said he had encountered some work with RED, I was really curious to know first-hand what the experience was like. Sony Vegas is a curious creature - it’s the name you hear least when talking about desktop video editing, until you talk to users, at which point this Windows-only tool gets near-cult status. It’s especially big among visualists because its original developers built it from a musical perspective. Throw in the RED camera’s digital cinematography, though, and something interesting happens. -PK

While I’m not rich enough (yet ;)) to own a RED camera, I’ve been pretty curious to see what the editing workflow is like with different apps.

When Sony Vegas 9 came out, the first feature that got my attention was RED support. I have always loved Vegas for its simplicity and excellent workflow, so I wanted to learn if it would still be beautiful with the huge RED files. I downloaded a couple of R3D files from http://www.redrelay.net. Here are a few observations:

• You can open Vegas and just drag the r3d files, they will scale to the project resolution you are in. No need to convert the files or use proxies.
• If you want full 4k support, you need to change your project settings for 4k (there’s already a preset for that).
• I was able to achieve 12fps playback on my Core 2 Quad CPU, which seems pretty good. [Ed.: For the file size, I'd say that's really terrific - and Nat's PC wasn't an expensive machine, either.]
• You can set your project resolution lower (to 720p) and realtime playback will bump to full framerate (24fps).
• Audio will be imported as 4 separate tracks (this is great as Vegas’ audio tools are very good).
• At 4k, you can do a lot of cropping before losing quality, which is very nice.

What was really impressive for me was the ability to change the RED raw settings directly from Vegas. Among other things, you can set white balance, exposure, custom curves, color space, all within Vegas. You can see the result in realtime. I do a lot of RAW photo editing
with tools like Adobe Lightroom, and being able to do the same with video files is magical.

I tried the same thing in Premiere Pro CS4 but wasn’t able to get the files on the timeline (Premiere would say the files were not of a recognized format). Now, I’m not a Premiere expert, so it might be my fault. [Ed. Still, the ability to get Vegas' speed and workflow here to me is a huge boost - and the fact that Vegas, even with RED, still can run happily on modest machines. -PK]

There’s a very good article about all of this here :
Going one better: RED editing and what Vegas 9 has under the hood [Broadcast Newsroom]

Ed.: I hope Nat forgives me for doing this, but I have to post this shot of him with the RED camera. This thing is just huge. It looks, at least, like a friendly robot. The idea that anyone would go out and buy a car when they could have one of these instead just baffles me. -PK

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.