This is a really cool little toy (the research project is located at http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/) that superimposes a movable 3D object (a cube, a toroid, a sphere, etc.) onto a live video stream (like from a firewire-connected camcorder) in the place of a special template or pattern. On the video, the software superimposes the object wherever you have the special pattern (a black square with some writing in it). I’ve created a disk image (Mac OS X 10.3-10.4 compatible) with the test programs already compiled and ready to run.
Click Here to Download ARToolKit-2.71.2.dmg.
To run the programs, print out the patterns in the patterns folder, plug in your camcorder, and run the programs in the bin folder. Here are a couple of snapshots:
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| simpleTest |
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| exview |