14 replies to this topic

[Marc Wakefield]

Hi guys,

It's been a while.


With launching a new business this year and a one year old son, I have been a little absent from the 3D Coat forums.
I thought I would drop by though and start doing a bit more 3d sculpting again.

I also found out about this: http://live.leapmotion.com/about.html

They created it for 3D modellers and artists :

"Who is LEAP? How did you get started?
The original inspiration behind Leap came from our frustration with 3D modeling— something that took 10 seconds in real life would take 30 minutes with a computer. Molding virtual clay with a computer should be as easy as molding clay in the real world. The mouse and keyboard were simply getting in the way."
It looks like a slice of the future for us artists and they have an SDK available for developers. Had any of you heard of it before?
How do you think it would work with 3D Coat?

[Marc Wakefield]

I held my arms straight in front of me at a 90 degree angle for 2 hours and then tried to wiggle my fingers....
They fell off.

I must admit I only thought of the positives when I first saw this but actually pretending to model something with your hands without any feedback certainly does feel very odd.
I am still very happy using my wacom tablet, keyboard and mouse. I just thought this looked cool.

Its a bit like the Wii and Kinnect in a way. It's fun to wave your arms around for a bit but it quickly becomes tiring. I still always prefer playing games with a control pad.

[Marc Wakefield]

Can anyone say necro? ...

 

So, I just pre-ordered the Leap Motion Controller which is now due to ship on the WC June 22nd. I just couldn't resist it for so many reasons. If I can't use it for anything really productive it will entertain my 2 year old and his new baby brother.

 

Do you think it would work with 3D Coat right away or would it need some serious programming to get a plug in up and running?

The SDK is out there...

[The Candy-floss Kid]

Hard to imagine what this would be like with regard creating art.

For me the lack of tactility and sensory feedback would muffle the pleasure of my biscuit crumb covered wacom.

[carlosa]

The future release of Leap -if there isnt any new delay- will include own development integration to windows desktop.

 

Hard to take opinion -from my pov- about a hardware that today by today -again from my pov- is vaporware

[L'Ancien Regime]

No it's not vapourware and somebody here is already creating a 3d coat plug in for it.

 

http://3d-coat.com/f...showtopic=11150

 

Photonvfx says he's already developing it.

 

 

 

sshhhh! This is hush hush!

Don't tell anyone, but I am already currently developing a prototype of this with Andrew's assistance and oversight (my company just got our Leap Motion developer device yesterday). We will let you know when/if there is something good to show. Don't clamor too hard - the device is not publicly available yet (Leap is still working the kinks out of it with developers like us, there are connections issues, driver issues in general still going on with it), but I can tell you 3D Coat interoperability is a possibility and likely is in the cards...

 

its' going to be awesome.

 

 

Can't wait

Edited by L'Ancien Regime, 16 May 2013 - 04:19 AM.

[carlosa]

oh

 

ty for enlightme

 

my fault so

[L'Ancien Regime]

oh

 

ty for enlightme

 

my fault so

You should go visit Leap's website and look at all the videos on it; the creator said he made it with CG and particularly Maya in mind.

 

I'm praying that having two or three Leaps daisychained will put Wacom out of business

[L'Ancien Regime]

 

http://youtu.be/1Rn3q75mdns

 

 

40,000 devs signed up

12,000 dev units shipped already.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by L'Ancien Regime, 16 May 2013 - 02:53 PM.

[carlosa]

Why there is always a Release Date Update

 

Thats the point not clear for me

 

https://forums.leapm...ase-Date-Update

[L'Ancien Regime]

Why there is always a Release Date Update

 

Thats the point not clear for me

 

https://forums.leapm...ase-Date-Update

 

 

 

Because when you're creating something new it's kind of hard to put a schedule on the discovery to solutions to problems...

[Zeddicus]

It sounds as if they could have actually released the hardware a while ago. If it truly was delayed for the reasons given, then it surely could have been sent out right now given the other concerns are all things that could have been dealt with after the fact (e.g. taken from their forum: "building our developer program, Airspace, OS interaction, etc"). I highly doubt the pre-order folks would mind finally having the finished/polished hardware right now while downloading more stable software down the road. In a way it's a bit like the boy who cried wolf and the kind of thing that can make one start to doubt their sincerity, dangerous considering this particular product is a want and not a need for most people. Hopefully they'll get it right come June.

 

It's a lot smaller than I thought it was, after looking at some images of it, and could actually be built into a Wacom tablet I think. In fact I could see myself attaching it to the top of my tablet with stick-on velcro strips. What I see in my minds eye is holding the tablet pen in my right hand and sculpting/texturing with it at the same time as I use my left hand to manipulate the mesh (pan, zoom, rotate), kind of like holding one of those plastic models in one hand while painting it using the other. Can't really see myself using it to actually model though.

[photonvfx]

Can't really say too much because of the dev agreement. But I'm having a bit of trouble with the hardware I have. The last two SDK updates have improved things, but hopefully the final hardware will be much better. Though there are still software issues to work out in the drivers and APIs. It is an amazing device, but I'm having trouble making bulletproof things for the masses. And I do see big things for it (they have deals with Asus & HP - so expect to see it built into laptops in the future), but the delay until July-ish (was supposed to be out in May - though I've had this dev device since Jan) and my experience say it's not ready for prime time yet- I.e. granny or a five yr old won't find it intuitive yet. I do need to spend more time on working on the plugin (as opposed to work that pays the bills) but was waiting for improvements in the SDK to make things easier for me...

[photonvfx]

Btw, I see sculpting in air as a toy and not the real use case of it. That's a cool tech demo, but probably not practical. A lot of devs in the leap forums are forgetting UX stuff and things like arm fatigue. Might be fine for 5 minutes, but you don't want to work 8 hours like Tom Cruise in Minority Report. I'm aiming for more subtle smaller gestures like finger flicks and catches to make it work in conjunction with a wacom tablet or mouse. This magical holodeck sculpting idea is not practical in real use (maybe as a toy, but not for pro work). Physical feedback is important, and most people don't have the body awareness to know exactly what they are pointing at.

I've had 20 people try to calibrate it by pointing chopsticks at dots on their screen and almost all of them were way off from what they were really pointing at and were different among themselves on subsequent attempts. Believe it or not only dancers or people who had extreme body awareness (like their arm is where they think it is in space) did well at doing tasks like this. All this means making a single interface for all people with complex gestures very tricky - and your app has to compensate for what people *think* they are doing. It is not as simple as writing an app and hooking it up. This is a whole new interaction paradigm.

Edited by photonvfx, 17 May 2013 - 09:59 PM.

[philnolan3d]

I've had my eye on this for a long time and do plan to get one when they come out. One reason is that the guys at ReconstructMe are trying to make it into a high detail 3D scanner.  I think this would be really awesome on top of it's intended uses.

 

@Zeddicus yes it really is about the size of a cigarette lighter. They've talked about how they want to have it built into laptops.