Month: December 2017

During this semester, I have been able to freely develop my skills and understanding of a subject field I enjoy. This has enabled me to develop on my digital skills in terms of designing unique looking assets, which in turn are animated and projected through augmented reality. During this semester, I have enjoyed being able to put my full effort and attention into a project that I came up with and developed, having a keen interested and desire to improve and develop skills in the subject allowed me to freely work and adapt the project with ease. This I believe can be shown throughout the work I have done this semester. As always, I have enjoyed being able to interact with a wider audience, receiving positive and constructive feedback on how to improve my project from people with a wider skillset than mine was both inspiring and insightful. It was also nice to see that people were interested in my project and that they wanted to see any improvements I made.

It is always good to seek guidance and inspiration from other content creators. Conducting analogous reviews on other motion graphic pieces had a huge impact on my final designs, and for future projects. I am also aware of the benefits of asking others for help, this being from fellow students and mentors. Allowing others to look at your project from another perspective resulted in new ideas and techniques into improving content.

Difficulties that I faced were mainly technical, as both Unity and After Effects were new to me I had to spend a little more time working on my motion graphics and scenes within Unity to further understand the software’s. However, through patience and perseverance I believe I have developed greatly on these skills. If I was to approach a similar project in the future I would like to spend even more time on the development process of creating a motion graphic piece. Creating a longer and more technical animation, in terms of the assets I use and how I animate them with keyframes and tools, would allow me to develop my skills to maybe even a professional level. I would also like to give myself more time in creating the augmented reality side of the project. As although I believe I have done a sufficient amount for this module, it could have been more polished as I did not estimate the sort of timescale needed to create an augmented reality piece.

Overall this module has allowed me to further understand what aspects of digital media I needed to consider and develop my skills in. Working in a helpful and safe environment, it allowed me to fail fast and improve on new ways to create exciting and fun content, all of which can be integrated into my portfolio.

In an article by Rupert Deans (2017), an idea is discussed that augmented reality will help graffiti artists show off their work without the worry of police or people who consider it an eyesore. Despite it being illegal, graffiti is still a major art form in populated areas of major cities, it is an important part of cultural conversation.

With a phone and virtual spray can, artists will soon be able to leave hidden marks for others to find in the urban environment. This virtual graffiti will allow aspiring artists to be safely creative and push boundaries, all within the public domain and without creating an eyesore. Allowing governments to worry about the bigger issues, as well as clean the streets of traditional graffiti.

This type of graffiti could be on every surface, including art exhibits, available to anyone who chooses, but hidden from those who consider it to be visual pollution. This type of creative technology has already been used. In late 2016, a digital sculpture was placed inside the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington State to demonstrate the potential of Microsoft’s HoloLens. The sculpture consisted of moving words and phrases, only visible to those wearing the headset.

As always with new technologies like this, the legal systems will have to adapt to it. Asking questions such as ‘is graffiti still a crime if it exists only in the virtual world?’ If an image is doodled onto the side of a building, but it is only visible to those who wish to see it, is it still counted as defacing public property?

Graffiti artist raised another question Sebastien Errazuriz, after a group of New-York based artists mocked up a “vandalized” version of Jeff Koon’s Snapchat AR dog. He asks ‘should corporations be allowed to place whatever content they choose over our digital public space? Central Park belongs to the city of NY.’ He suggests that for corporations to advertise using this technology, they should pay rent. As it is after all a public space and in normal circumstances this type of advertisement would need to be approved.

As augmented reality is growing to become more monetizable, advertising in public spaces could grow to become a major industry.

Apple’s Chief Executive Tim Cook, has stated that he prefers AR to virtual reality. He feels that VR could isolate users, whereas AR involves mixing graphics and the real world together. This view is becoming evermore popular within tech circles.

“I’m incredibly excited by AR because I can see uses for it everywhere,” Mr Cook replied.

“I can see uses for it in education, in consumers, in entertainment, in sports. I can see it in every business that I know anything about

“I also like the fact that it doesn’t isolate.

“I don’t like our products being used a lot. I like our products amplifying thoughts and I think AR can help amplify the human connection.

“I’ve never been a fan of VR like that because I think it does the opposite.

“There are clearly some cool niche things for VR but it’s not profound in my view. AR is profound.”

We have already seen Apple put huge investments within this new technology, their latest mobile system, with iOS11, has made it easier for augmented reality features to be added to apps via the ARKit.

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References

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41590323

https://qz.com/1072528/the-next-trend-in-street-art-will-be-graffiti-in-augmented-reality/

https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/08/jeff-koons-augmented-reality-snapchat-artwork-gets-vandalized/

The final process of this project was to create the app inside of Unity, which will be used to augment my videos. Below I have added a quick clip which shows the initial starting process of creating my app. I first had to import my app pages, so that they can then be linked together through their buttons.

In the build settings I then had to app ‘Open Scenes’. When my buttons are applied to these numbers they will automatically load that scene (app page) when clicked on.

Next I had to go onto Vufoiras website, where I also receive a licence key for my AR app. The images that I want to be used as targets are then added, where they can then be downloaded as a database and imported into Unity.

Here shows my first target image that when parented with my first animation, it will play when the camera finds this image.

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Below is a quick run-through of how the app will operate in Unity. When pressing play it allows me to view each scene as the user would on their phone. Here we can see that each of the buttons are working and will direct the user to the desired app page. The buttons also have a nice ‘push down’ effect when clicked on. Upon further discussion with one of my tutors an issue came where I may not be able to place this app onto an actual phone, as it may be too difficult. If it was to be put onto a phone it would have to an Android application to avoid any legalities. I will also not be able to include the process where the user could record their augmented experience, this is due to other legal issues where a permissions sections would need to be added so that the app could access the users photos to place the recording.

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Getting the Video to Play in AR

The final step of the project was to get my videos to play when the image target it found in Unity. Through a long process of trial and error, and substantial help from my tutors, we were able to get it working. Below is the process taken.

First I had to import my video file into the image targets folder.

Next the Vuforia Core Package needed to be installed as it provides necessary code to allow video playback.

The Vuforia Core package also provides a setup that will allow the video to play using a video child and canvas for play/pause. I then had to assign the image target to be the ones that I uploaded previously.

Next the video clip chosen is the animation that I imported. By un-ticking the play and pause button the video will play freely once the target is discovered.

Upon doing all of this the video would not seem to play when we tried to augment it. My tutor recommended adding this piece of code to the video tracking script, which worked very effectively. This code will override the tracking pause script and instead play straight away. All that needed to be done was to scale and re-position the video.

Below is a video clip showing proof of concept of how the video would play when using augmented reality. Sadly I will not be able to use this app on a mobile device, however using it on a desktop with the app pages proves that it would be a fun feature to have in and app. Sadly the video is not very good quality, but we can see that the video sticks nicely to the image target.