SHADOW CHARACTERS

ONDEL ONDEL

These are the characters we will be using for our interactive shadow projection. Each character represents the country of each group member. The user will have a choice from these to pick the one they like and the shadow character will be displayed on the projector. Characters are from Thailand,South Africa,Indonesia,Botswana and Palestine respectively.

DAYAK : the native people of Indonesia It is a loose term for over 200 riverine and hill-dwelling ethnic subgroups, located principally in the interior of Borneo(Indonesia).
MUAY THAI:  a combat sport from Thailand that uses stand-up striking along with various clinching techniques,similar to kick boxing. This character represent the sport.
HERERO WOMAN: an ethnic group inhabiting parts of Southern Africa. The majority reside in Namibia, with the remainder found in Botswana and Angola.
ARAB MAN & WOMAN : people originating from the Middle East and found mostly in North Africa and Western Asia.Mostly of Muslim descendants.
MENORA: this a type of dance that originates from Thailand. The character represents the dress code of the main character of this dance performance.
ONDEL ONDEL: a form of folk performance using a large puppets. It originates from Indonesia and is often performed in festivals. The word ondel-ondel refers to both the performance and the puppet. The puppet, is about 2.5 meters tall with 80 cm diameter, made of woven bamboo. It is constructed in such a way so that it easily lifted by one person from the inside of the puppet
HANG TUAH:  legendary Malay warrior who lived during the reign of Sultan Mansur Shah of the Sultanate of Malacca in the 15th century and was known to be a ferocious fighter.
LEGONG: Balinese dance refined dance form characterized by intricate finger movements, complicated footwork, and expressive gestures and facial expressions. Its origins can be located in Thailand,Cambodia,Laos,Indonesia and Malaysia.
ZULU: also known as amaZulu. South African ethnic group  living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

MULTIMEDIA APLLICATION

MULTIMEDIA APPLICATION

APPLICATIONS USED FOR “PLAYING WITH SHADOWS” PROJECT

·         Adobe Illustrator

·         Adobe AIR

·         Adobe Flash

·         Microsoft SDK for kinect

Adobe Illustrator:

In our project for shadow projection we will have characters that are from different countries including Palestine, Indonesia, Botswana, Thailand and Malaysia to be randomly picked by the user. These characters will be assigned profiles. In total there are 10 characters and these were designed in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Adobe Illustrator is primary a vector graphic manipulation software. A vector graphics editor is a computer program that allows users to compose and edit vector graphics images interactively on a computer and save them in one of many popular vector graphics formats, such as EPS, PDF, WMF, SVG, or VML. It is used to create images that are small in file size, but can be resized to any dimension while still maintaining print quality. Some common uses for Illustrator is for logos, illustrations, layouts for fliers, advertisements, billboards, signage, brochures, business cards, web design, and loads more. Illustrator can be used for just about anything outside of photographic images.

Adobe AIR:

Adobe Integrated Runtime, also known as Adobe AIR, is a cross-platform run-time system developed by Adobe Systems for building Rich Internet applications (RIA) using Adobe Flash,Apache Flex (formerly Adobe Flex), HTML, and Ajax, that can be run as desktop applications or on mobile devices. AIR allows developers to use familiar tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver®, Flash Builder®, Flash Catalyst®, Flash Professional, or any text editor to build their applications and easily deliver a single application installer that works across operating systems. Adobe AIR runs on Windows®, Mac OS, Android™, iOS, and BlackBerry® Tablet OS.

System requirements

Windows

·         2.33GHz or faster x86-compatible processor or Intel® Atom™ 1.6GHz or faster processor for netbooks

·         Microsoft® Windows® XP Home, Professional, or Tablet PC Edition with Service Pack 3; Windows Server® 2003; Windows Server® 2008; Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise (including 64-bit editions) with Service Pack 2; or Windows 7

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

Mac OS

·         Intel Core™ Duo or faster processor

·         Mac OS X v10.6 or v10.7

·         512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)

Android

·         ARMv7 processor with vector FPU, minimum 550MHz, OpenGL ES 2.0, H.264 and AAC HW decoders

·         Android™ 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, and 4.0

·         256MB of RAM

IOS

·         iPod touch (3rd generation) 32 GB and 64 GB model, iPod touch 4, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPad, iPad 2, iPad3

·         iOS 4.3, 5.0, and iOS5.1

BlackBerry Tablet OS

·         BlackBerry® PlayBook

Adobe Flash CS5:

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast. More recently, it has been positioned as a tool for "Rich Internet Applications" ("RIAs").
Flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provide animation of text, drawings, and still images. It supports bidirectional streaming of audio and video, and it can capture user input via mouse, keyboard, microphone, and camera. Flash contains an object-oriented language called ActionScript and the Flash editor supports automation via the JavaScript Flash language (JSFL).
Flash content may be displayed on various computer systems and devices, using Adobe Flash Player, which is available free of charge for common web browsers, some mobile phones, and a few other electronic devices (using Flash Lite).
Some users feel that Flash enriches their web experience, while others find the extensive use of Flash animation, particularly in advertising, intrusive and annoying. Flash has also been criticized for adversely affecting the usability of web pages
So, we are using adobe flash CS5 to make an ActionScript of the movement. First, we make the ActionScript the bone tool of the shadow after that we connect the bone tool with the ActionScript of the Kinect. As we know adobe flash have many library for Kinect, so we choose adobe flash. ActionScript 3.0 is the actionscript that we choose, because actionscript 3.0 is the compatible actionscript for Kinect.

 

Microsoft SDK:

A software development kit (SDK or "devkit") is typically a set of software development tools that allows for the creation of applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform.
It may be something as simple as an application programming interface (API) in the form of some files to interface to a particular programming language or include sophisticated hardware to communicate with a certain embedded system. Common tools include debugging aids and other utilities often presented in an integrated development environment (IDE). SDKs also frequently include sample code and supporting technical notes or other supporting documentation to help clarify points from the primary reference material.
SDKs may have attached licenses that make them unsuitable for building software intended to be developed under an incompatible license. For example, a proprietary SDK will probably be incompatible with free software development, while a GPL-licensed SDK could be incompatible with proprietary software development. LGPL SDKs are typically safe for proprietary development.
A software engineer typically receives the SDK from the target system developer. Often the SDK can be downloaded directly via the Internet. Many SDKs are provided for free to encourage developers to use the system or language. Sometimes this is used as a marketing tool.
An SDK for an operating system add-on (for instance, QuickTime for Mac OS) may include the add-on software itself, to be used for development purposes if not necessarily for redistribution together with the developed product. An interesting situation arises here between platforms where it is possible to develop applications that can at least start up on a system configuration without the add-on installed, and use a Gestalt-style run-time environment query to determine if the add-on is present, and ones where the application will simply fail to start. In other words, it is possible to build a single binary that will run on configurations with and without the add-on present, albeit operating with reduced functionality in the latter situation.
Providers of SDKs for specific systems or subsystems may sometimes substitute a more specific term instead of software. For instance, both Microsoft and Apple provide driver development kits (DDK) for developing device drivers.

CULTURE CHARACTERS

CHARACTER : Herero women

COUNTRY: Namibia

Using Kinect to Create Flash Animations with Awesome Animator

If you want to create a quick animation then instead of animating every frame by hand wouldn’t it be simpler just to scan in some human motions and use those? Well now if you have a Kinect that is exactly what you can do!!! Just plug your Kinect into your PC (you may need a separate power adapter if your Kinect cam bundled with your XBox or if you bought your Kinect separate from your XBox it should plug straight in with the USB).


Now you will need some software which turns your actions captured on the Kinect into a motion capture file (BVH). You can download some free software from the Brekel website.
Now do a little dance, jump up and down and capture your motions. Save them as a BVH file.
You can then import this BVH file into Awesome Animator (make sure you download the latest version) to create a Flash animation. The animation will show your movements as a stick figure but you can change these by double clicking on a rectangle and changing it for a different graphic.
Here is an example of importing a BVH file to Awesome Animator. (This one is of a horse but the same principle applies.) I have changed the head from a rectangle to something more interesting.

If you don’t have a Kinect you may be able to download some free BVH files that others have created.
Once you have made some good animations you can put them on your website or share them with your friends and don’t forget to mention they were made with Awesome Animator!!!
Digital Puppetry
Just because you are a human it doesn’t mean your animation must be of a human. For example, you could use your arms to pretend to be the jaws of crocodile. Then when you import the BVH file into Awesome Animator simply delete all the layers except for the arms (which will now be jaws) and use them as the basis of an animation!!!
You can combine multiple captures. For example first capture your body. Then capture your arm gestures again but this time use them for animating the mouth of your character.
A third capture could use your arms to animate a claw.
You can add different captures for different characters by importing the BVH inside different MovieClips.
Now just export your animation as a Flash (SWF) file!!!


resource : http://awesomeanimator.com

Hand tracking with Kinect in Flash

after search a lot in internet try this and try that thats what i have came out with it to the next step of our project which is  the easiest way to connect Flash to your Kinect. Nothing to install, no setups, no terminal. And the settings and source files to make it happen are included ;)

1. You'll need to download:
*Synapse: http://synapsekinect.tumblr.com
*OSCulator http://www.osculator.net/download
*The 2202 Pack: An OSCulator file that keeps the communication flowing + the .fla source tracking both hands:http://www.zeladores.net/2202.zip
*The NETLab toolkit: http://www.netlabtoolkit.org/

2. Copy the contents of the "NETLabFlashWidgets_3_2_1″ folder to the Flash folder /Configuration/Components
2b. Do a GET INFO (command-I) on the NETLabHub.app + in the info window check the "Open in 32 bit mode"
=

Hand tracking in Flash is now a 1′ operation:

- Plug your Kinect and be sure you downloaded all files and followed the steps for the NETLab toolkit (copy widgets, check The Hub to run "32-bit")
- Run The Hub.
- Open the file "OSC hands" in OSCulator.
- Open the trackhands.swf (you published, remember?)
- Run Synapse.
- Do the cactus position and hold it for a few seconds until Synapse detects your skeleton, then the trackers in the swf should start following your hands.
Done.

Flowchart

Tasks Divided.

Design Characters of the shadow - Ibtisam tayeh & Muhammad Asha Gayuza

Coding of the project - Tantri Muditahawari & Alaa Moufeed Alshorbaji

Projector, kinect, computer, printings - Naimah Tseladikae