Category: Process

ASSIGNMENT 5: Pixelation Mapping

To see other Assignments:

Assignment 1: Magic Mirror  |  Assignment 2: Face Tracking  |  Assignment 3: Seflie Instructor  |   Assignment 4: Alpha Blending   |    Assignment 5: Pixelation Mapping

For this assignment, we were given a patch and told to tweak it by adding extra functions / effects to it.

So here are the two things I did:

  1. Increased the definition from originally 4 crop pieces to 16.
  2. Add an audio played with a drunk object in step and get those average signals to prepend to the brightness, contrast and saturation of the final image

So I ended up having what I felt was quite a cool colourization with a matching soundscape to it. The figure also looks more define and seen clearer as I gesture or move around the screen.

So this wraps up the last class assignment. I learnt quite a bit for Max this semester. Hopefully it might be useful in some ways in the future. Although I greatly still prefer coding in Java or C# for Unity. But I guess having the ability to control and manipulate in real time has its added advantages (provided computer can process those effects). Yup, so looking forward to what the next semester brings!

ASSIGNMENT 4: Alpha Blending Faces

To see other Assignments:

Assignment 1: Magic Mirror  |  Assignment 2: Face Tracking  |  Assignment 3: Seflie Instructor  |   Assignment 4: Alpha Blending   |   Assignment 5: Pixelation Mapping

The assignment requirement for this one was to use MAX  to blend a face onto my own. So I chose Donnie Yen to morph into.

However, as mentioned in the video, I could not find a way to make the image still look clear even in the fullscreen. Because in CV jit there is a need to downsize the aspect ratio for detection. Hence this time I presented it as final effect and process together in the same video.

Sensing.

  • Coordinate info from cvjit.faces matrix used to calculate the position of face with respect to the screen
  • cvjit.faces coordinate info is then used to determine where to put Donnie Yen’s face so that it match mine.
  • MSP can detect if sounds are made  through the Microphone.

Effecting.

  • Donnie Yen’s face to follow my face.
  • Donnie Yen’s face will fade in upon a sound like I just tapping my computer desk and he will also fade out on second tap.

My patch is below where I have displayed clearly the steps involved. (1) CV jit faces (2) Donnie Yen’s face import and blur (3) Alpha blending

I learnt quite a lot from this assignment as it is really a next level of real time image manipulation. Hope to be able to advance further with the final assignment.

ASSIGNMENT 3: MAX + MSP Interface

To see other Assignments:

Assignment 1: Magic Mirror  |  Assignment 2: Face Tracking  |  Assignment 3: Seflie Instructor  |   Assignment 4: Alpha Blending   |   Assignment 5: Pixelation Mapping

For this third assignment, we are using MAX  and MSP to create a Selfie Instructor. And just to note, I did not add any music or additional voice overlays in the video, so what you hear is only the tracks invoked by MSP as well as my own reactions.

It basically detects where your face is on the screen and gives you instructions. So end result is to get you facing forward looking at the camera with your face in the center before it says “OKAY” and allow you to take the picture! Which you can take simply by making a sound. KA-Cha!

Sensing.

  • Coordinate info from cvjit.faces matrix used to calculate the position of face with respect to the screen
  • cvjit.faces coordinate info is then used to determine if the face is in the LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN quadrant of the screen, or if there are no faces at all
  • MSP can detect if sounds are made  through the Microphone

Effecting.

  • Relative position of the face (LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN quadrant) from Sensing is then used to:
    • Invoke audio playback of respective tracks on a playlist in MSP
    • Display instructions on the screen corresponding to the audio playback
    • So basically telling the user to go in the directions towards center of screen depending on which quadrant the face is in  and to also alert them that the app is running and to look at the screen should they be looking away
  • When user is in the centralized position, the screen will display “OKAY”, and the MSP sound detection through Microphone mentioned earlier on will be activated. User can then tap or say something at the screen to have their photo taken.

 

It was great fun doing this project and I kind of wanted to have a bit of humor as you can see, because I like the idea of machines scolding people and making them do stuff. Also it was good to finally be able to attempt combining MAX and MSP together in the same patcher. Having a proper layout was also essential in helping the process along so that I could have great visualization of the dataflow.

Of course, there are still some issues. Like displaying the images there will be this glitchy effect because the bangs are being outputted at a steady rate when user goes into any of the quadrants. Although in this case it kind of worked to the assignment’s advantage as it creates a sense of urgency to follow the instructions the user is being yelled at.

However would be good to know if there are elegant methods of controlling these flows. I know that the onebang can be used as a stopper valve for this and I actually used that for the center quadrant. However for the side quadrants you tend to not want too long a delay for the onebang or else it does not reset itself quick enough to react to the next position the user gets into. Whereas for the center it is fine because they will stay still to have their picture taken. So that is kind of the reflection on this assignment and I hope to learn more subsequently!

Process video log is below! Cheers 🙂

ASSIGNMENT 2: MAX Face Tracking

To see other Assignments:

Assignment 1: Magic Mirror  |  Assignment 2: Face Tracking  |  Assignment 3: Seflie Instructor  |   Assignment 4: Alpha Blending   |   Assignment 5: Pixelation Mapping

Hey! So this second assignment I am calling Gun in Your Face!

So to sum up the assignment first:

Sensing.

  • Coordinate info from cvjit.faces matrix used to calculate the position of face laterally across the screen
  • cvjit.faces detects when the face is at a certain proximity from the screen
  • cvjit.faces also detects when the face is off-screen or there is no more faces

Effecting.

  • Value for face position used to determine which frame from the video of gun moving left and right will play
  • When face is close to screen, playback of the gun firing video is triggered
  • When no faces are detected, video of me spinning the gun is set on loop like a ‘screen saver’
  • All videos have a 1.5seconds crossfading transition

screenshot-2017-02-06-22-57-54

I am rather satisfied with the outcome and more in-depth presentation of the process is in the video below. Here I really wish to express that apart from learning the stuff in MAX, what was really important to me was the asset creation in the assignment. What I have attempted was to use the assets to my advantage, the angle of the shot, the composition of the videos, thinking about transitions. And I really spent quite a bit of time dwelling on those aspects. So this played out really well as for most of the time in interacting with this piece, the transitions are as smooth as I would have them.

Also, this time I attempted to organize things a little more, showing only the essential stuff and visual information in the main patcher while the complex computations are put into the hidden ones.

What could be improved for this assignment is maybe thinking of ways to track vertically as well.

Cheers!

 

ASSIGNMENT 1: MAX Magic Mirror

To see other Assignments:

Assignment 1: Magic Mirror  |  Assignment 2: Face Tracking  |  Assignment 3: Seflie Instructor  |   Assignment 4: Alpha Blending   |    Assignment 5:


Quite Satisfied with this first try at Max, would like learn more! So what I have achieved:

Sensing.

  • cvjit.faces detects when one at least one face appears on screen
  • Face size is calculated by the coordinates of the approximated perimeter given by cvjit.faces
  • cvjit.faces detects when the face is off-screen or there is no more faces

Effecting.

  • Mirror is inverted to the correct orientation
  • Opacity is triggered based on proximity
  • Screen will fade to black when no face is detected

 

The reason for the cutting to black when no faces are detected was because I wanted to eliminate the issue of screen flashing whenever the face is out of position as cv.jit.faces requires the user’s face to be very frontal else it will not register.

However I would also like to explore how to limit to only working when there is ONLY ONE face… that will be more trail and errors, will get to that sometime later.

 

Below is a video log for my own documentation of process, so I can review the thinking process behind the max patcher for this magic mirror assignment.

Cheers!