Organized
by Prof. Greg Welch and Prof. Francesca Talenti, we, some students from
COMP575/770, work together on this “Gerrard Virtual Show” project for the CHAT
festival in February 2010, Gerrard hall, UNC-CH. General Impression of “Gerrard Virtual Show” By generating three-dimensional animations based on computer graphics technique and projecting them on four walls of Gerrard hall, as well as its ceiling and floor, we are going to simulate a magic world that includes scenes of under water and above water. Sometimes, you’ll dive in the deep water and be amazed by alternating light and shadow, enjoying thousands of fishes dancing around you. Sometimes you’ll feel like flying in the sky, with birds passing by your side, water surface with rolling waves under your body. What’s more interesting is, if people walk in a predesigned region of the hall, they can use specific objects like beach ball to interact with those animations. When the beach ball is threw into this region, water splashes from surface and fishes are scared away by this sudden interruption. When the beach ball is passed through this region, it will become the head of an octopus with 8 legs waving up and down, and swimming through the water. There are many other surprises for you to feel.  Project Introduction Our project could be seen as a small virtual reality (VR) system[1], where participants could interact with the computer-generated underwater and abovewater environment. This VR system is composed of hardware part (projectors, tracking sensors, and computers) and software part (tracker system, projecting system, different kinds of 3D simulating applications, and game engine control system that deals with data from tracking, projecting and simulating applications). The general running process of the system is: In Gerrard Hall, there will be several appropriately positioned projectors which present carefully generated 3D animation on the hall’s walls, ceiling and floor. In this way a virtual water world is constructed. A virtual cube is in the middle of the hall. Any people holding specific given objects in this virtual cube, their action could be sensed by tracking sensors and recorded by the tracker system. After getting the action data from game engine system, 3D simulating applications will update their animations to respond to participants’ action. Then these animations will be presented by the projecting system again. The whole process of the system runs in a real-time mode so that the interactions between users and environments are expected to be immediate. Our project could not be seen as a simple technical VR system. It combines art and reality. Both Non-photorealistic images and photo-realistic images can be compatible, and they could be combined seamlessly and elegantly. As part of the CHAT Festival, our project is expected to bring a fire-new way to show new types of art creating with technology as a medium. We will also get a prototype of a platform, a further development of which might become an in-use “displayer”. Applications featured as immersion and interaction could choose this kind of “displayer” to present. Some demo video provided by Dr. Francesca could be downloaded. Demo1 illustrates how we project picture to the wall of Gerald Hall and the track of moving objects (balls or particles). Demo2 illustrates the effect of integrating several projectors (with a little overlapping) and integrating several effects(bird fly, water) with picture of real world. From this project, we could practice knowledge presented by Professor Dinesh Manocha at Computer Graphics class, learn more about advanced Graphics Topics nowadays, and what is more, experience a perfect combination of art and computer science technology. |