ENLIGHTEN3D

by Joshua Koopferstock

Constructive 3D Furniture Demo from joshk on Vimeo.

Usability and time-to-learn are two big concerns with any web application.  For 3D applications, both of these factors have led to the downfall of some pretty innovative sites.

In the video above, I demonstrate how we use the Constructive technology to refurnish our own conference room in 3D without having to learn any new or foreign process. With a few points tagged in two pictures by an operator, Constructive understands the camera position, orientation, and focal length, allowing me to move around the 3D furniture along the floor with the correct perspective.  And since Constructive understands the relationship between the photos, moving a piece of furniture (or a French maid, as the case may be) in one photo will also move it with the correct perspective in any and all others.

This application also addresses the issue of scalability; by not requiring any highly trained or skilled work to be done, the simple manual tagging process can be cheaply outsourced or put “in the cloud” using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk.

I look forward to seeing innovative retailers using Computer Vision technology like Constructive to add a level personalization that doesn’t exist today.  Soon, we won’t have to try to imagine what our new room will look like; you will be able to perfect it before ever putting any money down, and even share your ideas with friends and family to get their thoughts too.  A mother knows best, right?

All 3D models used come from www.Presto3D.com

By Joshua Koopferstock

Who hasn’t always dreamed of having a $2000 sculpture of their own head?  I know I have.  And finally, thatsmyface.com will make this dream come true.  With the upload of 2 photos of your face, one in front view and one in profile, thatsmyface.com will reconstruct a 3D model of your head in a semi-automatic fashion. This is a pretty neat attempt to bring a computer vision & 3D technology to the consumer market.

The technology behind the site is nothing new.  I can’t say for sure, but I would be willing to bet that thatsmyface.com is using FaceGen technology, which has been around for 10 years.

Similar?

Still, you don’t need cutting edge technology AND an exciting product to make a successful business; one of the two will usually do just fine.  Thatsmyface.com now just needs to convince people that what they’ve always wanted was random gear with their head as the main feature.  For the sake of entrepreneurship, good luck to them!

By Christian Laforte

In the last month, Josh and I have had the opportunity to meet with several companies on the cutting edge of the computer vision and graphics field. First, we sat down at SIGGRAPH with the team leaders on Intel’s Larrabee project (the topic of a future post). More recently, we talked to Videosurf CTO Eitan Sharon, our pick for top company presenting at the TechCrunch50 conference two weeks ago. Last week, we got to chat with the founders of a local startup, Float4 Interactive, a Montreal start-up, who is turning image processing and computer vision techniques into an interactive art form.

Although Float4’s custom software technology works with cheap cameras (e.g. eyeToy) and regular screens, the effects are most impressive when displayed life-size using a back-projected display and two high-performance cameras. They provide turn-key solutions and even rent the hardware for special events, such as extravagant wedding ceremonies, industry expositions, and advertising installations.

Applications and clients.

Other companies experiment similar technologies — I remember seeing some at SIGGRAPH – but Float4 has raised the bar in interactivity, robustness and aesthetic quality.

Here are a couple examples of the applications of their current technology:

• Move your body to create unique animations (such as juggling a soccer ball)
• Experience the joy of flying like an airplane or a bird, by shifting or waving your arms.

Already, the company has attracted attention from notable clients such as the Cirque du Soleil. Despite our best efforts to pry it out of them, the Float4 folks are staying quiet on exactly what kind of display they’re building for the Cirque. Personally, I’m excited to see how this state-of-the-art graphical technology gets integrated into what is already a visually astounding performance.

Visit Float4 Interactive

By Joshua Koopferstock

If creating 3D models was as easy as taking photos, it is safe to say that the use of 3D would be far more widespread than it is today.  From e-commerce to virtual tourism to casual games, reducing the cost and complexity of creating 3D models would have a widespread effect on multiple industries.

Feeling Software is making that possible.  Over the last 2 years, we have worked to develop a technology that allows anyone to create 3D models with little effort and no training.  Our goal: simplicity.  You take a bunch of photos with a regular camera from any angle you please, and we automatically create a 3D model.  The demo video below discusses our project in detail.

Feeling Software Demo from joshk on Vimeo.

We have thought of a variety ways that this technology can be applied to solve problems for consumers.  For our readers, imagine that you could take photos of an object or scene, press a button, and instantly have a high-quality 3D model of that object or scene.  If this technology were available today, how would you use it?

By Joshua Koopferstock

After months of development, Presto3D left closed beta last week and has opened to the public.  If you missed the post a few weeks ago, Presto3D is a 3D model marketplace that automatically creates 3D previews of the content that is submitted.

The reception has been positive, and we have gotten press coverage on several major animation and game development sites.  If you haven’t taken a look at the site yet, come check out what we’ve been up to for the last few months.  If you already visited the site during the closed beta, it’s worth going back just to see the fullscreen 3D previews that we’ve added in the latest release.

All feedback is appreciated!

By Joshua Koopferstock

You tag this photo:

Source: www.bt.dk

Polar Rose finds this photo:

Source: www.newprophecy.net

With facial recognition in Picasa Web Albums launched yesterday, an exciting computer vision application once again bumps heads against privacy concerns.  On the one hand, automatic tagging of photos through facial recognition can be a useful time saver; if I have an album of 100 pictures of my family vacation with the same 5 people, I would much rather have my computer tag them for me than having to sift through them one-by-one adding tags.  On the other hand, I might not necessarily want all photos of me to be so easily found by anyone.

Picasa Web Albums seems to be OK in how it deals with this issue, at least for now.  Users only tag their own albums, and, as far as I can tell, the information gathered is not used to search Google Imagesand automatically tag images of the people you tag in your web albums.

This is not the case with every player stepping into this industry.  Polar Rose, announced late-2006, uses facial recognition on user-tagged photos to search for more photos of an individual in any publicly available images.  The service is designed as a browser plug-in and an embeddable widget for photo-sharing sites, and rumour has it that a partnership with one of the major sites is imminent.  Users tag photos of people that they find anywhere online, and Polar Rose uses that information to find that same face across other images.

The example at the beginning of this post should illustrate why this may be a concern.  For Paris Hilton, perhaps her image benefits when scandalous pictures surface, but this is not the case for most of us.  Should photos of people really be that searchable?

In reality, though, the point is moot.  Using Google Image search, I probably could have found the same 2 pictures shown above; with facial recognition, this just becomes more efficient.  If you have been using Facebook for the past few years, you have probably already come to terms with the fact that people can quickly find many pictures of you, including ones that others took without your consent (though in fairness to Facebook, you can untag and render unsearchable pictures you don’t like).

Conclusion: from a computer vision standpoint, it is neat to see these technologies reach the mass market.  From a privacy outlook, more (visual) information about us is going to become accessible without our direct consent, but only information that was publicly available in the first place, and this development is probably inevitable.

On a final note, there is one feature proposed by Polar Rose which I can’t help but find far more creepy than useful: personal photo RSS feeds.  Basically, get instantly updated by RSS each time a new photo of a targeted person is found.  Stalkers rejoice!

By Joshua Koopferstock

These product concept designs by Mac Funamizu, a Japanese graphic designer, are among the most amazing applications of computer vision technology that I have come across. What I found especially inspiring is that some of the technology that we are working on at Feeling Software will be key to making a concept such as this a reality. And without too much effort, I believe that just about everyone reading this blog can see how their own work in 3D or computer vision will be a necessary building block to make this possible.  I hope Mr. Funamizu’s work concept fires the imagination of many people regarding the possibilities and usefulness of augmented reality.

“Future of Internet Search: Mobile Version” Product Concept

This Photosynth-esque approach (above) shows you other photos of the same scene you are looking at, from the same angle.  Here, the designer demonstrates looking at the scene in front of you over time through historical photographs.

Image recognition + mobile internet + Wikipedia?

Text recognition + mobile internet + babel fish?  I wish I had that when I was trying to decipher menus in Slovakia!

See more possibilities for this concept at Mac Funamizu’s blog, petitinvention.