zero point nine

I just wanted to mention that at the end of the month I’ll be taking a happily anticipated break from the commercial grind and going back to school, to the Parsons MFA Design & Technology program.

I’m looking forward to posting new and hopefully interesting things here as I progress through the program, the time during which I aim to broaden the scope of my personal sandbox and make experimentation a full-time vocation. But hopefully without losing any of the snark.

Video demonstrating my first “experiment” with the Android Market. An answer to a question nobody asked– “What if you made an Android program launcher in 3D?”

Video updated with most recent version running on Honeycomb, 6/2011

It was, to be frank, a gigantic pain in the ass coding the motion for this, since there seems to be no Tweener-like class written in Java (Java, not processing…). Anyone know of one?

Built using min3D.

free version

almost-free version :T

This post announces a 3D framework/library-in-progress I’ve been writing for Android, written in Java with OpenGL ES. Between the names min3d, modest3d, and llama3d, I’ve gone with “min3d” for being the least self-deprecating while still conveying an appropriate level of expectation that I’m comfortable with. :)

I’ve gone legit by putting it up on Google Code (first time for everything, etc.). While just an early build, it should at the very least be useful for educational purposes if like me you’re just starting down the Android path.

My aim while building this was to make a library that required no extra massaging of model data on its way to being used by OpenGL. To that end, data can be created and manipulated directly on the ByteBuffers that are used by OpenGL, without the need for any intermediating (ie, redundant) data structures. And hopefully wrapped in such a way that’s still relatively easy to use.

But this approach also imposes some important restrictions. The maximum number of vertices and faces of an Object3d is fixed after instantiation, and the dynamic addition/removal of vertex or face elements is currently not supported. If/when implemented, these operations will have to be much more costly than, say, with a linked list. But unavoidable, as far as I can tell.

Here’s what’s currently implemented through the API (all conventional stuff…)

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As the geek sits down to learn a new programming language or new programming platform, the first thing he or she must do is learn to make a program that successfully prints the words “Hello, world!” to the screen.

The main significance of this first minor feat as it relates to the programmer is not epistemological, technical, or temporal, but psychological. Crossing the — shall we call it the “Hello world” threshold? — brings with it the realization of the existence of a universe of infinite possibilities. But also the burden and intolerable vertigo that comes with that sense of unlimited freedom.

For, alas, there is no standard “second program” for the geek aspirant to sit down to write. The programmer is on her own. Of the potentially infinite paths that lie in front of her, which will she choose?

Actually though, the most common second program chosen with pedagogical motives in mind — I would submit — would be that venerated bouncing ball, colored 0xFF0000. If you come from a Flash background, you probably know of it well.

Here’s mine, on the Android platform- (Sure wish I could’ve used Flash 10.1… ;)

Download installable AIR file
Requires AIR 2 Beta 2 Runtime +
Windows .NET v3.5

My aim here was to get familiar with AIR 2′s new capability of interacting with external processes’ standard streams.

One useful way of learning how to use a new feature is to proceed directly to trying to abuse it.

To that end, this AIR application takes in a fairly continuous stream of uncompressed binary image data from a native process’ standard output. My hope was to get real-time screen capture updates into AIR at a decent frame rate.

Details and source code after the break–

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Here I’m just expanding upon the ‘texture extraction’ idea posted before. This version maps video onto 3D objects in a much more direct manner by using ray-casting, like the examples in the last several posts.

Controls:

• Mouse rotates object
• Mouse drag moves object
• [SPACE] remaps the texturing of the 3d object
• [ENTER] cycles through different 3D primitives
• [H] shows full list of kludgey hotkey controls

Update with video (8/25/2010):

Although this piece dispenses with the encumbrances of an AR marker or any application-like functionality, I think the method being used here has some potentially interesting uses for an augmented reality-based design application. (Or for more whimsical uses like “upload-your-face” done in 3D). I’ve disabled backface detection, so the imagery gets mapped on all sides of the object rather than just the camera-facing polys, which makes it more visually interesting. Live demo above requires webcam.