Proposal for summer semester 2006 project
Version 1.1, 3/11/06
Building on the work of the ITB259 Puppetmasters project which provided a prototype model of an interactive virtual puppet environment and the ITB009 Motion Tracking project, which attempted to provide low-cost realtime motion capture. These projects produced prototype applications which address and explore some of the requirements of a Virtual Puppet system.
This project aims to more closely realise the original vision of the Lumiere Ghosting1 concept than the previous projects, as defined by the Lumiere Ghosting team. Examination of the previous projects shows the successes and shortcomings of the techniques and technologies utilised, groundwork on which this project intends to capitalise in order to reimplement the Virtual Puppet system using technologies which the project team believes will be better suited to the unique requirements of the system. The Puppetmasters system utilises the Unreal Engine 22, which though powerful poses substantial legal and financial issues when used for development3. In order to circumvent these problems, the project will utilise freely-available open source software for development.
System functionality:
Completion of this project will result in a functional multi-user Virtual Puppet system, enabling users to generate an avatar bearing their image, and to interact with one or more other users in a three-dimensional environment. Control will be achieved primarily through real-time motion tracking techniques.