YouCube at Lowlands 2009 Biddinghuizen, The Netherlands

From 20 untill 23 august 2009, we were at Lowlands 2009 with the project for which we created the software / game for Thijs Eerens. Visitors of the Lowlands festival would jump in and play a game of Tetirs with real boxes. After building a box you could jump around an position the piece on screen by jumping on huge buttons. We used openFrameworks for the game and arduino for the hardware.

Youcube @ Lowlands 2009 Benthuizen from roxlu on Vimeo.

24 August 2009

Tidy rules

Yes, Tidy rules!

I'm working on lot's of projects at the moment which is why this blog hasn't been updated in a while. Though I haven't been doing nothing ;-). As you maybe know I'm building my house and we just finished the kitchen! Besides working on my house I'm working on the YouCube project which is due at 20 august when we go to LowLands 2009! Before we go to LowLands I want to finish a website for some clients. After these projects I will start working on my house again ;-) .. and hopefully I'm ready at the end of september when I can start working on some really nice projects I'm looking forwarrd to.

I've been working on some features for our companies (ApolloMedia) internally used Flash library. It now has some nice plugin system which is able to load assets files from different locations and initializes a website based on a XML file. All transisitions between the states in the site can be defined in the XML file. Using this "recursive state model" (as how I called it) we will be able to create flash websites in a flash ;-) To make these websites maintainable I've been working on a new module for our CMS which is able to administrate things like menu/menu-items, images, videos, carousels etc..

.. for this module I used tidy to format the XML.. so just as a reminder for myself:

// tidy rules!!
$a_config = array(
    'indent'       => true
    ,'input-xml'   => true
    ,'output-xml'  => true
    ,'wrap'        => 200
);
$o_tidy = new tidy;
$o_tidy->parseString($s_xml, $a_config, 'utf8');
$o_tidy->cleanRepair();
$s_xml = (string)$o_tidy

5 August 2009

In progress: YouCube

I've been too busy the last couple of days... I'm still trying to finish my home but received lots of new clients and projects last week so I've been writing proposals en doing bits of work on my house whenever possible. Meanwhile we at ApolloMedia are working on a tetris-like game that will be controlled using a physical installation at LowLands 2009. These screenshots are just rough sketches that give you some idea of how it's going to look like.

16 July 2009

Glowies

Today I created a video to visualize a concept of us at ApolloMedia for interactive garbage cans. We want to create a second version of our interactive garbage cans called "Brullenbakken". These garbage cans should light up when someone throws something into them. Hopefully we will start building these "Glowies" in a short time.

Glowies from roxlu on Vimeo.

4 July 2009

openFrameworks.info

Recently I created a website where I can publish articles on the framework to which I got addicted openFrameworks. It's really an amazing frameworks which removes barriers to get started with C++. Although I had some experience with C++, openFrameworks was just that little step I wanted to start using it for visualisations / applications.

28 June 2009

Flocking a la Craig Reynolds

Created my first article on flocking at openframeworks.info based on the paper by Graig Reynolds. I really like the natural motion of these tiny boids. This was also an experiment on blending with openGL.

Flocking with openFrameworks from roxlu on Vimeo.

28 June 2009

Inverse kinematics

Movie of inverse kinematics on Flickr, seems interesting to use for some nice motion of maybe flowers when used together with perlin noise (?!) If you click through the photos of hahakid you see some other interestings topics like super quick optical flow test.

23 June 2009

Rol Je Rot Rolstoel Race back from Paramaribo

Our Rol Je Rot project is back from Paramaribo. It was lot's of fun as you can see on the photos!

23 June 2009

Those sweet jellies

Tried some different techniques to simulate soft bodies. Basically there are a couple of ways to create soft bodies. I found a paper describing soft bodies using a pressure force which was worked quite nice. Other techniques describe point masses/particles which are connected with spring forces. The particles technique looks more natural to me as the pressure force is more like a ... hmm very soft plastic thing. Maybe I used the incorrect properties, but I had lot's of fun anyway ;-)

Next thing I want to do is adding a force which follows a person when walking in front of the webcam. When you walk by you're followed by these sweet jellies!

BTW, the best results I found using a somewhat adjusted ofxBox2dSoftBody object; see www.openframeworks.info for a spring based soft body which seemed to work very well.

21 June 2009

Busy Busy Busy....

Hi there, haven't added something to this blog in a week now, though I've been very busy with sugarcity. Last monday the site went online which I designed and developed. Together with BrandWriters with whom I worked together we're very happy with the result. BrandWriters is responsible for the texts and social media around the website.

17 June 2009