There are a lot of things that the Kinect can bring to the community and among them is the ability to create visually appealing art videos. One of the most spectacular we have seen is the Illuminous by Youtube user egradman. With the Kinect, user’s body outlines are captured and then transformed into colored particles that exhibit some sort of flowing behavior. The result is absolutely amazing as the user becomes the canvass for a great artistic video effect. The figures will appear human in nature but the colors and the effects give the illusion of a supernatural entity. The developer used Panda3d and Python in order to create this Kinect art program. What’s more impressive is the 3d nature of the video that can be generated. Have a look and see for yourself.
Here is brief description of the Illuminous:
“Remember that scene at the end of the matrix where glowing green symbols traced across an agent’s body? Well, this is just like that, but in realtime. What you’re looking at here is a particle system, where YOU are the source of the particles. Particles (seen on screen as dots) spring into being on the surface of your body. They then traverse the contours of your body until they reach an edge, at which point they’re flung into space and disappear. All this is possible because the Kinect lets me reconstruct the 3d geometry of whatever it sees.
There are other forces at work on the particles in this universe. Upon being flung into space, particles are acted upon by a sort of shifting wind (actually a perlin noise field)”
For more information about the Kinect Illuminous, visit the project’s Youtube Page.
