Friday, March 30, 2007
Did I tell you to visit kuler yet? Go! Go Now!
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The new Adobe Creative Suite 3 is coming out very soon. The details get announced officially in NYC in about 12 hours, but the Adobe site has already been updated with all the new feature details. I'm not just excited because I'm demonstrating much of this at an upcoming evening for Infinite Systems, but the new Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended could have some really nice implications for Second Life design.
Given that you will be able to place an image onto a live-rotatable 3D model, it just remains to be seen how complex that model can be. All we need is the ability to upload images onto an avatar and all kinds of texture-based design will be revolutionised. It looks like it will be possible; if it is, let a great big "yay" go up to the rafters. Tons of other cool stuff in there too across the whole suite, above and beyond the "runs at least half as fast again on your Intel Mac" feature.
Given that you will be able to place an image onto a live-rotatable 3D model, it just remains to be seen how complex that model can be. All we need is the ability to upload images onto an avatar and all kinds of texture-based design will be revolutionised. It looks like it will be possible; if it is, let a great big "yay" go up to the rafters. Tons of other cool stuff in there too across the whole suite, above and beyond the "runs at least half as fast again on your Intel Mac" feature.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Got an hour and a half? Like your editing? Watch The Cutting Edge - The Magic of Movie Editing from BBC4 via Google Video. Then tell me what it's like, because I haven't found an hour and a half yet.
Monday, March 12, 2007
How many photos can you take on one set of four AA batteries? On Saturday night, as part of a shoot for a music video, mostly on motor drive, I took 4686. They're going to take some sorting. I'll let you know how it works out.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Monday, March 05, 2007
A really good short animated film, Maestro, won (2.9/5) the Portable Film Festival category that my film Airport came joint second (2.7/5) in. Gobsmacking is that Maestro was Oscar nominated for Best Short Animated Film.
Hey, I don't mind coming second if the winner's going to be Oscar-nominated. Congrats, Geza!
Hey, I don't mind coming second if the winner's going to be Oscar-nominated. Congrats, Geza!
There's some great work being done out there towards multi-touch interfaces, as featured in the Apple iPhone and in great work from Jeff Han. In full-screen two hand interfaces like that, I see potential for an idea I had many moons ago, around 1994, while at university.
If you're manipulating objects on a screen with your hands, there's only so much you can do with different configurations of your fingers: stretch, resize, move, etc. More complex operations are going to need a specific "tool" to be selected before an operation can take place, like choosing the brush or move tool in Photoshop.
The idea is that at the top corners of the screen, "drawers" of "gloves" are hidden. As you move your hand to the top corners, the drawer opens, and you can (virtually) wear different gloves for different purposes. A resizing glove on one hand and a reshaping glove in the other. A movement glove on the left and an animating glove on the right.
It seems obvious, but nobody had done it in 1994 and nobody seems to have done it to date. I was excited when I saw Minority Report, but the interface didn't need that level of detail. Jeff Han's work is much more elegant, but it looks to be using quite complex finger gestures. Some make sense, but I'm sure they'll hit a cognitive barrier sooner or later. There just aren't enough fingers, or positions for fingers, to emulate everything that Photoshop offers, for example. Virtual Gloves provide a clean, intuitive way to work with large-scale touch environments.
Why publicise this? Since this site is archived in at least a couple of places, it should count as prior art, so the idea can't be patented and locked away -- it's public. Of course, if someone wants to offer me a job (or a research project) making this a reality, speak up. Email iain [at] funwithstuff [dot] com.
If you're manipulating objects on a screen with your hands, there's only so much you can do with different configurations of your fingers: stretch, resize, move, etc. More complex operations are going to need a specific "tool" to be selected before an operation can take place, like choosing the brush or move tool in Photoshop.
The idea is that at the top corners of the screen, "drawers" of "gloves" are hidden. As you move your hand to the top corners, the drawer opens, and you can (virtually) wear different gloves for different purposes. A resizing glove on one hand and a reshaping glove in the other. A movement glove on the left and an animating glove on the right.
It seems obvious, but nobody had done it in 1994 and nobody seems to have done it to date. I was excited when I saw Minority Report, but the interface didn't need that level of detail. Jeff Han's work is much more elegant, but it looks to be using quite complex finger gestures. Some make sense, but I'm sure they'll hit a cognitive barrier sooner or later. There just aren't enough fingers, or positions for fingers, to emulate everything that Photoshop offers, for example. Virtual Gloves provide a clean, intuitive way to work with large-scale touch environments.
Why publicise this? Since this site is archived in at least a couple of places, it should count as prior art, so the idea can't be patented and locked away -- it's public. Of course, if someone wants to offer me a job (or a research project) making this a reality, speak up. Email iain [at] funwithstuff [dot] com.
