practical head tracking

hey all, this is a nice forum you all have (been lurking for a while) and i thought this would be the place to go for some help :slight_smile:

so i recently became very interested in doing 3D properly with current technology. and not that red/green or polarizing kind. the holy grail is holographic, but thats like saying i’ll just use magic. haha, not gonna happen

and then i remembered johnny lees tech-demo from a few years back [youtube link] and it got me thinking: head tracking! i know the obvious application is video games, but what about 3d movies? obviously not live-action, but an animated short would be perfect right?

because of the nature of shifting perspective (actually moving the camera) i need a real-time render engine. which blender has! both unreal and source are stronger engines, but you need the games to run it, and blender will be better with distributing

i have just started this project. i am working out the logistics of where i need code, and what i need the code to do. and in the next week probably, i will build a pair of glasses with the IR LEDs and try to set up the wii-mote, and johnny lees demo. but here’s the kicker, i can’t code :frowning: - i can learn small snippets where needed, but i’m not a coder.

so if anyone wants to help, heres my game plan:
1.key framed camera movement inside the blender game engine
2.real-time modified movement of a key framed camera inside the blender game engine
3.switching cameras/scenes using the ‘free moving’ key framed cameras
4.using the IR sensor (wii-mote) within the game engine
5.using the IR sensor information, to control the local movements of the camera
6.switching cameras/scenes with the IR sensor information implimented
7.exporting a stand alone application that (ideally) doesn’t require installation

thanks for any help you can offer! its a little too ambitious for just one person :slight_smile:

Check this head tracker thingy out. Mr. Doob’s like the Da Vinci of HTML5.

http://mrdoob.com/90/Face_tracking_+_3D_Scene

Possibly not relevant, but still cool. Plus, I believe coder people emerge from the sparkle tree once a year to play tricks on mortals and inspect elements in sweet web stuff like this for code learning. Put out some cookies to appease them and they’ll let ye be!