Flash will kill Max/MSP Motion Tracking (Stephen E. Dinehart's IMD Blog)

Flash will kill Max/MSP Motion Tracking

:) that's for you Perry.

This past weekend I presented @ LAFlashapaloozastock a prequel to MMs MAX conference this week in Anaheim. My presentation seemed to go well, made some connects.... but then the nights last presenter got up on the M-I-C and wowed me...

Grant Skinner was his name, and the cutting edge o’ Flash 8 was his game. He was doing stuff w/ Flash 8 that made Processing look bad; creating procedural organic vector based tress, interactive smoke and fluid simulations, with thousands of sprites animating at once and yes some fine ass Braitenberg Bots.

My favorite of these was called Jungle, he combined a piece called “Garden” in which flowers where being generated with “Vein” a dynamically generated vein system. It was creating this dynamic vine that would grow flower and blur into the distance of the back round.

Then to top it off interfacing, directly from Flash8, to his i-Site he was performing motion tracking w/ LEDs and silhouettes, in real time with nothing but Flash and a cam.

He had built some basic applications w/ this technology akin to Sony’s Eye-toy. A piece that made the cam data look like it was a fish tank, the user could then makes waves and ripples in the tank and gather bubbles with his hands as they rise to the surface.

He had also created a navigation system that was inspired by the Minority Report interface he called “Mista”. He had a glove with two LEDs one on his thumb and another on his for finger, which was tracking.

The goods are now on the street check out these tutorials, examples and articles on Motion Tracking with Flash8:

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flash/articles/webcam_motion.html

http://www.flashguru.co.uk/flash-8-webcam-motion-detection/

a great video example:
http://www.playdocam.com/flash8/fire.html

Posted on October 19, 2005 12:08 PM | Permalink

Comments (7)

will

yes, I attended one of grant skinner's talk at max this year, and he's really amazing. flash is developing into a really nice app, with complete OOP coming to as2.0 and nice mobile features coming in flash lite 2.0.

however, it doesn't really make much sense to me to say that it's necessarily "better" than other tools innately... max/msp does a crap load of stuff that flash can't do, and processing isn't built to be an application-creation tool like flash 8 is, but more of a sketching tool -- which it is vastly superior to even flash 8 for, since flash/actionscript still requires a lot more base knowledge to get up and running with. tools are tools, and flash is a good tool, but I'll bet that grant skinner could come up with some pretty nice stuff in max/msp/jitter or processing as well.

Posted by will | October 19, 2005 1:52 PM

Posted on October 19, 2005 13:52

SEDinehart

I envy your MAX experience, I couldn't afford the $875 student pass sticker price. I'm sure it was worth every dime. I'd love to hear about your experience.

While your right about tools, which seems to be more about creators, users is what I think Flash will provide. With a player saturation of over 98% in computers with web access, it allows interactive works to be allot easier to distribute.

When was the last time your head of someones kid firing up a Max patch and use video interaction?

S/He can do it with Flash, heck we all can, with just a cam and a Flash enabled browser.

:) mmmmm...macromedia

Posted by SEDinehart | October 20, 2005 10:40 AM

Posted on October 20, 2005 10:40

Hoberman, Perry

Oh please Erin. Cycling has a $59 student license. And I'm afraid I missed the announcement from MacroAdobe about Flash (the authoring program, not the plugin) suddenly being offered for free. Give it a rest.

Posted by Hoberman, Perry | October 20, 2005 1:58 PM

Posted on October 20, 2005 13:58

SEDinehart

Notice I did not say authoring... this will provide users; which doesn't do much good for gallery work, but is great for pieces intended for web delivery.

Posted by SEDinehart | October 20, 2005 2:30 PM

Posted on October 20, 2005 14:30

Hoberman, Perry

... and Max has a standalone runtime environment that's freely distributable and cross-platform. The same kids, with the same webcam and PC, can in fact easily 'fire up a Max patch and use video interaction'.

And yes, I've made Max patches for my kid.

Posted by Hoberman, Perry | October 20, 2005 3:01 PM

Posted on October 20, 2005 15:01

kellee

I'd like to point out that you guys were having this blog argument while simlutaneously sitting across the table from each other during 555a.

Now I understand some of the glances I noticed darting between you two...

Posted by kellee | October 21, 2005 10:13 AM

Posted on October 21, 2005 10:13

SEDinehart

It was a blast! FLASH WILL BE KING!!!!!!
:)

I love heated debates with intellegent talented opinionated individuals!

Thanks for playing.