Just tried this in the office with my phone. Impressive! You should submit this as a Show HN - really deserves to get some reviews.
Good fun for those with kids and even mucking around in the office demoing to friends.
You should throw some more money at this to get a few dozen more models/pages going. I can't think of a 1-5 yo that wouldn't like this. Colleague with children said "My kids are going to lose their shit when they see this."
Wow, the demo video is really remarkable! I will try it out with the office iPad tomorrow. Really great job! The video speaks a thousand words even without any spoken words. =) How do you align the coloring book pages from the camera feed? Do you detect the corners of the printer paper or is there some printed, hidden marker on the page?
I'm not involved with the app, but there's no need for a hidden marker in this case -- the page IS the marker. It is a planar surface with one of a few known black and white images on it. So: Detect features in each blank drawing, store them in a database included in the app, then use the same corner detector and descriptor at runtime and you have a very constrained feature matching problem.
We use Vuforia and Unity. Adrian Clark did his PhD thesis on tracking and we based our app on his ideas and work. We don't use SIFT as it is patented but we have better research in the pipeline.
Our 3D modeller Shun spends about a week per page carefully designing and animating the models. You are correct, they are per page and completely pre-defined. The fun part is colouring in the pages and seeing the results :D
Even me, 28 year old male, can have a lot of fun with this app.
Personally I'd like to do that but we have a lot of limitations with the Unity platform and supporting multiple platforms. Every feature needs to be implemented at least 2 times (iOS, Android) and tested.
Perhaps in the future once we get some money coming into the company. Right now we don't have any more funds left for development.
I'm sure this has already been discussed, and I know this falls under "easier said than done", but you guys should really try to get this on toy aisle shelves. Perhaps in the form of a book? Maybe have a prominent "Try me!" feature on the cover instructing the user to install the free app and point it at the cover to get people pulled in.
With the right marketing and execution and a little luck you'll have tons of traction and be in a better position when they come to you to license your tech for their books!
Why would any kid ever want a "plain old" coloring book without the 3D augmented reality?
I tried installing colar app on an Android 2.3.6 (Samsung GT-S5300) phone, but it seems it's not compatible with that device. It's a low-end phone, so I guess I will need something more powerful.
Since Google Play doesn't display the device compatibility anywhere in the store (besides "This application is not compatible with your device") could you please state the application requirements somewhere on your pages?
What a fantastic app! Feels like a reverted foldify or so :-)
I've spread the word, I'm sure you should see a rise in downloads today from both Switzerland and US.
Thanks for sharing this!
That really is awesome. I just shared it on my Facebook page, and there were people talking about downloading it within minutes. Seems like marketing this thing should be relatively easy.
Thanks!! One of the most rewarding experiences I had was watching children at one of our recent workshops - when they first see what is going on their faces light up and it is amazing to watch.
Well, I think marketing is the single biggest challenge that we face. People who have the power to make the decisions don't always understand the technology.
Yeah, it might be a bug. I've seen this before - we are using standard Unity plugins but honestly I'm not confident that they are really reliable. Try restarting the app.
It's an amazing conference that has been going on since 2007- great people, much smaller than CHI (of course its scope is much narrower, and there is a lot of cross-pollination), very high quality and diverse publications. Even though it's an academic conference, it has more of a hacker/DIY feel to it than CHI in my opinion, which is what I love about it.
Speaking of which, the deadline for TEI2014 is Aug 1st... back to writing I go :)
(and if you're into this, please contact me through my profile! Tangible/embodied interaction is a small world, would love to hear from fellow HNers who are in it)
I was just thinking how close we must be to "A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" (see: "Diamond Age", by Neal Stephenson, referenced by me and seiji here. GREAT book.)
There were two versions of primers. The mass market version had auto-schooling (giant boat of threatening asian girls). The expensive ("for royalty/CEOs") version had a live adult person interacting with the child, but the child didn't know a real person was behind it. The child just thought the book was very good at being instructive. The actor of the expensive primer had no way to communicate with the child except through Primer-Approved stories, but the actor would direct and personalize the stories as necessary for the child's life conditions (i.e. "remote parenting").
Did Lucas ever license the rights to anyone for the futuristic chess game on the millennium falcon? Seems like an obvious application of this tech, particularly now that Disney owns the franchise.
This is similar to some of the AR games on Nintendo 3DS, with the exception that you don't need to look through a screen to get the effect. You can imagine this on Google Glass too, viewable only by those wearing the HUD.
We've been doing things like this for years at the HITLabNZ. Check out our latest project, which is free this week! http://colarapp.com