Installing OpenCV on Linux Mint (Maya)

Remove any installed versions of ffmpeg and x264.

sudo apt-get remove remove ffmpeg x264 libx264-dev

Install all the dependencies.

sudo apt-get install libopencv-dev
sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall cmake pkg-config yasm
sudo apt-get install libtiff4-dev libjpeg-dev libjasper-dev
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libdc1394-22-dev libxine-dev libgstreamer0.10-dev libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-dev libv4l-dev
sudo apt-get install python-dev python-numpy
sudo apt-get install libtbb-dev
sudo apt-get install libqt4-dev libgtk2.0-dev

Download the latest version ox x264 from x264 snapshots

tar -xvf x264-snapshot-version.tar.bz2
cd x264-snapshot-version/

If you are using 32 bit Linux

./configure –enable-static

If you’re using 64 bit Linux

./configure –enable-shared –enable-pic

Install it

make
sudo make install

Download the latest version of ffmpeg from ffmpeg Download.

tar -xvf ffmpeg-version.tar.bz2
cd ffmpeg-version/

If you’re using 32 bit Linux

./configure –enable-gpl –enable-libfaac –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-libx264 –enable-libxvid –enable-nonfree –enable-postproc –enable-version3 –enable-x11grab

If you’re using 64 bit Linux or ARM

./configure –enable-gpl –enable-libfaac –enable-libmp3lame –enable-libopencore-amrnb –enable-libopencore-amrwb –enable-libtheora –enable-libvorbis –enable-libx264 –enable-libxvid –enable-nonfree –enable-postproc –enable-version3 –enable-x11grab –enable-shared

Install it

make
sudo make install

Download the latest image of v4l from v4l-utils

tar -xvf v4l-version.tar.bz2
cd v4l-version
make
sudo make install

Download OpenCV 2.4.0
Download OpenCV 2.4.1
Download OpenCV 2.4.2
After downloading OpenCV 2.4.* package, untar it and make.

tar -xvf OpenCV-version.tar.bz2
cd OpenCV-version/
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RELEASE ..

Verify that the output of cmake includes the following text:

• found gstreamer-base-0.10
• GTK+ 2.x: YES
• FFMPEG: YES
• GStreamer: YES
• V4L/V4L2: Using libv4l

Build and Install OpenCV

make
sudo make install

OpenCV 2.4.* is now installed. Just make sure that all the libraries are linked properly.
Go to samples directory in OpenCV package.
Change directory to C or C++.
You’ll find a script there named build_all.sh.
Execute the script. It will make all the files. select any output file and run it. If it works then you are good to go.

sudo echo “/usr/local/lib” >> /etc/ld.so.conf
sudo ldconfig

Your OpenCV 2.4.* is installed and libraries are properly linked.


Using OpenCV with QtCreator:

•  Install QtCreator: sudo apt-get install qtcreator

• To use OpenCV in QtCreator simply add to the .pro file of your project these lines:

INCLUDEPATH += /usr/local/include/opencv
LIBS += -L/usr/local/lib \
-lopencv_core \
-lopencv_imgproc \
-lopencv_highgui \
-lopencv_ml \
-lopencv_video \
-lopencv_features2d \
-lopencv_calib3d \
-lopencv_objdetect \
-lopencv_contrib \
-lopencv_legacy \
-lopencv_flann

Original Post @ link

This Projection Mapping is Awesome!

Journey Game Out Today; Designing Feeling, Timeless Design

“Can a game move me?”

That’s the deceptively-simple quandary posed by producer Robin Hunicke of thatgamecompany on the eve of the release of their new PS3 title, Journey. But it’s a serious question, one that lies at the heart of all we do in creating digital music and motion. I often have conversations with other makers about whether the ephemeral aesthetic objects of our creative output are meaningful. To put it more bluntly: are we actually doing something productive with our lives? (Oh, admit it. The question must have occurred to you now and then.) But this idea of transforming how someone feels is both wildly ambitious and absolutely essential. Like love, it’s personal, universal, even commonplace, and yet endlessly baffling.

You make a game to make someone feel something. See, that was easy. Now… how, exactly?

Big-budget gaming had become so rooted in repeatable forms that it might have forgotten to keep asking the question, had not a passionate generation of independent game designers plunged straight into it. As such, it’s often game designers these days who, more than musicians or other interactive artists, may prove most articulate and most adventurous in talking about their goals. Maybe it’s those hours of grinding and leveling up … at the chore of game development, that is.

The team behind Journey talks about the game’s aspirations.

Those game designers at thatgamecompany were, initially, acclaimed experimental designers Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago; Shanghai-born Chen working at USC on the games Cloud and Flow, and Santiago entering USC’s interactive program with a background in NYU theater. Their games’ emotional appeal is expressed partly through motion itself: Cloud, then Flow, then Flower each had at their heart not just a game mechanic, but a way of moving. Free-flowing flight through the air is a signature element; even in this more grounded recent effort, the sense of freedom of movement is built into the games’ personality. I saw Chen and Santiago at a Game Developer Conference talking about Flower, and they talked about how the sense of motion was something they painstakingly prototyped in the programming language Processing.

Now published by Sony, thatgamecompany’s titles are taking on greater polish and are built by a bigger team. That promises to give them more depth, as they work to retain the small-team character in development.

Their aesthetic elegance should give them resonance in interactive and design communities who otherwise might look away from games, often fueled as they are by teenage testosterone fantasy and pumped-up comic-book imaginations. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

Then again, listening to Jenova Chen describe his designs as works of digital zen, it’s what these titles are, more than what they’re not, that draws you in – or might have you eyeing sale PS3 prices. Flower was “interactive poetry,” emotional-philosophical etude told in joystick-controlled choreography. Journey promises to do nothing less than explore the inter-connections of human beings.

Mixing painterly, illustrated qualities with flowing digitally-simulated movement, Journey sets a new aesthetic bar even before you hear the gorgeous soundtrack. Image courtesy thatgamecompany.

Against those beautiful, barren electronic sandscapes, then, the aim is to encounter other players in new ways. Multiple players can interact without words, choosing to cooperate with strangers to reach a goal. That makes these interactive, massively-multiplayer dunes into a strange and wonderful metaphor for our interconnected globe, one in which visual communication may be the only way to surmount barriers of language, culture, and acquaintance.

But whether or not that program is evident in gameplay, the visual and musical world is arresting and beautiful. It’s yet another reminder that technological horsepower alone doesn’t make games work; this could be one of those titles that seems just as visually-wonderful many years from now as today.

Feeling is built into the look, into those dunes and the flowing robes of a character.

Journey is out today:
http://thatgamecompany.com/games/journey/

Austin Wintory talks about his beautiful musical score to Gamespot:
Sound Byte: Journey

Patrick Shaw has a nice, succinct review for Wired:
Review: Mesmerizing Journey Weaves a Wordless Game Story [Game|Life]

Now, if I can just escape “Don’t Stop Believin’” and that horrible Atari 2600 game about the rock band every time I think of the name, I’ll feel so much better. Someone hand me a PS3 controller and a nice flat panel and I’m sure I’ll be cured.

Here’s the reaction to the game, in case that dev team feels like taking their victory lap:

And for a glimpse at what could be the Next Big Thing, the excellent Rock Paper Shotgun examines this year’s Experimental Gaming Workshop at the Game Developer Conference:
GDC 2012 Experimental Gameplay Workshop

Original Post @ link

Notes on using JMyron

Problem 1: Don't know how to install JMyron

Solution: Went here http://webcamxtra.sourceforge.net/download.shtml and downloaded JMyron0025. PC specific fixes were added in version 0025, so make sure to upgrade to 0025. Okay, then I opened up JMyron0025 folder. It contains 4 items: text document "How to install.txt", folder "JMyron", folder "JMyron" folder"JMyron Examples", folder "Extra DLL's". I followed the steps in the install guide; this entailed the following:

1. Dragged JMyron folder into Processing/libraries directory
2. Dragged JMyron Examples folder into Processing/Examples directory
3. Dragged the two .dll's in Extra DLL's (DSVL.dll and myron_ezcam.dll) into windows/system directory.

---

Problem 2: Tried to run one of the JMyron examples, received an alert message saying"myron_ezcam.dll not found"

Solution: Need to drag the extra dlls into windows/system. (see above). Also, you probably need to restart processing.

---

Problem 3: Ran one of the examples, but the video image is scrambled. You probably get this if (like me) you bought a cheap $30 webcam such as Logitch QuickCam.

Solution: The parameters passed to size() are incorrect. The size function is probably called like this: size(320, 240), but your camera does not support this resolution. What you need to do is find out your camera's resolution through one of the following methods:

1. Check your camera's specs on the side of the box. If you are using a $30 Logitech QuickCam like me, your resolution is 352 by 288. Change size(320, 240) tosize(352, 288) and you should be fine.
2. Run the example called "Myron_fasterSimpleCamera". Is it running? It's probably still scrambled but that's ok. Look in the processing output console (that black area at the bottom of the processing window) and read off your camera's "forced dimensions." These are the parameters you must pass to size() to get a clear image.

Jer Thorp: Make data more human | Video on TED.com

Jer Thorp: Make data more human | Video on TED.com

Jer Thorp creates beautiful data visualizations to put abstract data into a human context. At TEDxVancouver, he shares his moving projects, from graphing an entire year’s news cycle, to mapping the way people share articles across the internet.

Jer Thorp’s work focuses on adding meaning and narrative to huge amounts of data as a way to help people take control of the information that surrounds them. 

Full bio »

Using addons in Visual Studio [howto]

It seems that there are a lot of people (including myself) who don't know how to add addons in a blank Visual Studio project project.

Step1: create the same structure as the addon using filters then add existing files in the filter folders.





Step2: right click on the project to open the properties navigate to -> configuration properties -> c/c++ -> general -> additional include directories




Step3: edit additional include directories



Step4: add the folders from the addon. In this case src and libs.
You can find the paths in the install.xml file which is located in the addon folder.


PS: you need to set the include directories on every build configuration debug/release

Photos Make Rock Quarries Look Like Abstract Art

Rock quarries are only beautiful to the guy getting rich off of them. They ravage the environment, they’re boring to look at, and they conjure up unbecoming images of Fred Flintstone. But maybe photographer Tito Mouraz will change your mind.


Mouraz spent two years touring the open-pit mines of his native Portugal to capture the view from hundreds of feet beneath the earth. And boy, what a view it is. In Mouraz’s hands, 500-foot marble cliffs and stone blocks the size of Mack trucks flatten into intricate geometric patterns. Look long enough, and they start to resemble abstract paintings.
In a way, abstraction was the point. Here’s how Mouraz describes it:

It is a well-known fact that an image cannot replace reality. That is why I chose to include parts of a hidden horizon or an incomplete landscape, in this way suggesting a different perspective, since the proximity to these sites which grow in the opposite direction to what is normal, are usually unobserved by the spectator almost giving them the chance to rebuild them.

Mouraz shot all over Portugal, but spent most of his time in the vast marble quarries of Alentejo. “There are holes 160 meters [about 525 feet] deep,” he tells Co.Design. “I had to go down an elevator for about five minutes. It was scary.” In general, though, he wasn’t terribly concerned for his safety. “I paid close attention and took care because these are dangerous places,” he says. Besides “when the objective is the photograph, fears are secondary.”
[Images courtesy of Tito Mouraz]

Original Post: Photos Make Rock Quarries Look Like Abstract Art