Category: Digital Imaging

Epic’s Unreal Engine is mainly used to create video games, but now it can also be used to create augmented reality apps, thanks to Adam Horvath and his plugin for Unreal Engine 4. Adam’s Unreal4AR is based on the open source augmented reality SDK ARToolKit.

For several years now, the Sony DSC-RX100 digital camera has been lauded as the king of point-and-shoots, packing near-DSLR quality photography into a camera that can fit into your pocket. Over the years, Sony has revised the camera several times, and we’re now on the 4th generation of the diminutive, but powerful shooter, the RX100 Mark IV.

With everything that has been going on around the world, we have seen some temporary profile pic tools on Facebook to show support for various causes. Lots of folks had a French flag over their profile pics after the terrorist attacks in Paris.

E-commerce company Von Bismark might be giving Xbox One owners a good reason to dust off their Kinects. The company launched a new Xbox One shopping app called The Mall that features an augmented reality dressing room.

Experienced makers looking for a flash of inspiration for their next project should check out the latest guide from Adafruit’s Philip Burgess. He shows us how to make the DotStar Pi, a large light painter made with the Raspberry Pi and Adafruit’s DotStar LED strip.

Action cameras are already a hit with both professionals and amateurs, but they still have a ton of untapped potential, with live broadcast being one of its biggest applications. For example, earlier this year the NHL announced that it will be equipping its players with GoPros.

Ever since Dremel first introduced its Idea Builder 3D printer last year, I’ve been excited to get my hands on one. From everything I’ve seen and heard, it appears to be a very good value for an easy to use and versatile 3D printer. 

Custom mounts, docks and other connectors are simple yet impressive demonstrations of 3D printing’s potential. Right now you can either design your own connector or look for existing designs, but a group of researchers have created a third option: have a computer figure it out for you.

A group of scientists have come up with a system that makes hand-drawn animation much less tedious for novices. Their software analyzes your drawing in real time and then shows an overlay of what you might want to draw next, giving you the option to accept or reject its suggestions.

In the near future, you may be able to make yourself speak in any language, or have video proof of your friend saying he loves to eat poop. It’s all thanks to a new tracking and animation system that can transfer the facial movements of one person into a photorealistic CGI rendering of another person’s face, all in real time.

DSLRs and interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras take great pictures, but they’re still not very easy to tote around every day. So most of us who like to take photos on a regular basis end up resorting to our smartphones.

There are lots of companies making action cameras these days, but most of them fail to live up to the high bar set by GoPro. I’m happy to say that the Activeon CX action camera not only works as well as GoPro’s base Hero model, but is much more feature rich for less money.

Over the last few decades, computer graphics have become a more and more essential part of industrial design – especially in the automotive industry. The ability to visualize designs digitally has given designers and engineers the freedom to test and refine concepts and functionality prior to expending time and money on physical prototypes.

There are lots of photo apps and online services that can perform one-click enhancements. But these user-friendly shortcuts usually tweak a photo’s general quality, such as color or sharpness. Two Princeton University Computer Science students worked with Adobe Research to create a program that automatically detects and removes distracting elements from photos.

A couple of years ago we checked out a VRcade, a virtual reality arcade that freed players to move and translated their movements in the game with the help of motion capture systems. Artanim’s Real Virtuality is a lot like that, except it’s geared for multiple users and not just for games but for other content as well.

A couple of years ago we checked out OpenGlass, a prototype software that used Google Glass to help the visually impaired identify objects. OrCam has a very similar function. It has a camera that clips on to eyeglasses and recognizes text, faces and objects.