I cant describe how awesome this is to me, personally.

In 1998 I was hired on a contract to do a Fashion Show, where I developed graffix to project onto models who were on the catwalk in this theater....

Basically it was a music + visuals show where the models would walk down the catwalk and present themselves....

Guess what tool I had available to me to make this happen...

FUCKING POWERPOINT

I F5'd that bitch and projected a slide per model on a projector borrowed from work with me manually changing slides with --> for each model....

Lost my shit reading this. Thank you so much for sharing this.

That is just stunning.

I guess Disney Imagenineering dept. would love to do some cools things with this. Or perhaps they already have this capability?

These are the kind of things were I'd like to have a commercial version already!

Edit: Also, the url in the original post is from 2016! wow!

(@dang maybe add (2016) to the title?)

Disney has a (poor) version of this idea. They project an animation onto wedding cakes at their resorts. They're pre-rendered though, rather than dynamic like this. It'd be fascinating to see what uses they could come up with for this stuff.

Disney does a lot of projection mapping in the parks right now, but it's all (AFAIK) the traditional, pre-rendered type, with animations projected onto large static surfaces like the Magic Kingdom's castle, or onto animatronics with pre-planned motion paths.

I'm having a little trouble visualizing how this non-rigid projection mapping could get applied in a practical way in the parks today, mostly because it seems like it has a fairly small "active" area (determined by your projector and sensor resolution, essentially). I could imagine this being used in a parade or stage show, for example, but this system seems like it would be pretty restrictive as to where the performers could move and remain in the projection space.

Those projections onto the castle are quite stunning. The technology for producing an enormous, apparently seamless image on that uneven canvas is amazing (even if it's static). And a lot of creativity went into building an animation that used that very specific venue so well.

What if the projection space were mobile? One of the applications is to put projectors on moving objects, and project onto static (or moving) surfaces, assuming the system gets small & portable enough. How about one or more projectors mounted on each car of the Haunted Manison ride, or projectors mounted on flying drones aimed at the Spaceship Earth (the geodesic Epcot globe) during the night light show? Combine multiple projectors and a position tracking system, maybe even viewer head/eye tracking too, and I think there might be some amazing possibilities...

I think you could even go and apply the same algorithms to AR projections though. This would have massive applications in parks. Guests wearing AR projection goggles while touring the park allowing for a hugely immersive experience

I could imagine doing something for the house of terror like projecting ghosts or something like that, in the curtains to a doorway or on sofas/couches after you stand up (and have your shadow follow you while doing creepy things for instance)

Of course, I'm no expert but throw a few million dollars into this and you can probably come up with some neat stuff even if the projection space is small-ish for now.

Augmenting human actors/customers (think Harry Potter spells) could get interesting.

Disney uses something similar in a lot of their stage shows at their parks. They use a water fountain to create a screen and project onto the water sheet. It works surprisingly well, but I would assume that it is pre-rendered.

The water screens are actually a pretty old technique that you can do with any traditional light projector (flim or digital). The hard part is making the water sheet.

> Disney has a (poor) version

Seems an unnecessarily nasty way to refer to what I guess is earlier less advanced work.

What exactly is "nasty" about it, and why would anyone take offense at the use of the term "poor version"?

What do you think the word 'poor' means when referring to quality? Might be kinder to say 'less advanced' or 'simpler' or 'earlier'.

>What do you think the word 'poor' means when referring to quality?

poor (adjective): of a low or inferior standard or quality.

>Might be kinder to say 'less advanced' or 'simpler' or 'earlier'.

Kinder towards what? Is a multinational like Disney sensitive or is the technology sensitive to the choice of words criticising it? Or will the researchers take offense to their technology, which is objectively inferior, being described as "poor"?

We're stretching this too thin, inventing issues where there are none...

Real people worked on it, and you’re calling their work poor.

First of all, I'm not calling it poor, the grandparent did.

I'm saying it's nothing special to call it poor.

We say 10x harsher things everyday in HN for frameworks, languages, etc. Heck, check any thread about Apple products. Don't real people work on those?

Plus, ever read art criticism, or restaurant criticism, or political critiques even in the most respected newspapers? "Poor" is the least harsh of the terms they use. And those are also real people they level those things at...

Would the Disney version be considered inferior quality to this new research?

The connotative meaning of “poor” isn’t really anything that isn’t the absolute best. Words have meaning beyond the dictionary definition. “Poor” in this case means you think the researchers did a bad job, not that their work was a step on the path to something better. “Earlier”, or even “dated”, would have been a much more charitable depiction. And plenty of people are deriving joy from the application of that technology.

> in this case means you think the researchers did a bad job

It really does not. You’re inventing things to be offended by. It simply means it is low quality version of the same thing, which it very much is.

In retrospect, Ford’s first cars were a poor version of their 2019 ones. Doesn’t in any way diminish the accomplishments of the past.

I’m really not. And I don’t get offended by very much. Maybe you’re not a native speaker? “Poor” as it refers to quality is a negative qualifier. And it’s typically used in a subjective context. That’s the connotative meaning.

Even the definition used here (taken from Google) indicates so, if it weren’t truncated:

poor (adjective) worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality.

The list of synonyms is even more telling about it’s real meaning: shoddy, bad, deficient, defective, lamentable, deplorable, awful, etc.

These are not words I’d use to describe the technology, having seen it first-hand. The technology is not worse than usual and I really don’t see how it’s worse than expected or is otherwise undesirable. It’s out there and being enjoyed by people.

Apparently if someone thinks it’s poor?

Very cool, a sort of live-action cgi capability.

Hope it doesn't easily scale out to larger spaces and crowds, or the current tech industry would soon have public spaces filled with ads projected on peoples belongings.

I doubt it would ever be used on private property like that, but we absolutely will see this tech used in the advertising space.

Going to start ordering everything coated in vantablack then...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack

Unless you're Anish Kapoor you'll have to settle for Black 3.0 https://www.culturehustleusa.com/products/black-3-0-the-worl...

Plus, Black 3.0 isn't toxic like Vantablack.

...or Anish Kapoor.

Who makes a fine mirror.

The tech industry would soon have some very expensive equipment destroyed.

The target needs to be marked with infrared ink: you can project only on specific surfaces prepared in advance.

Edit: discard this comment, I misread the parent comment.

Not according to the comment that started this thread, which suggests that they no longer need the infrared paint.

no? the second link showed that it doesn't have to

> public spaces filled with ads projected on peoples belongings.

They literally could have done this for 100+ years.

They do not.

Do you see how what you say makes no sense other than a fear of technology?

You've seen projectors, you've seen how they don't just project them anywhere, it's hard to see how one makes this leap.

That second one is insane! I can't get my head around how they would be able to do it.

The second example doesn't, IMO, demonstrate the kind of deformation tracking the example in the OP does. As far as I can tell, they are able to get a depth representation, segment objects from a video, get an approximation of surface normals and reflectivity for those objects, and project a shaded surface onto those objects.

What they do not seem to be able to do without IR markers is project a diffuse texture to an object so that it would stick properly. See the one example with a non-uniform texture, where the fingers of a hand are fanned out - the texture warps noticeably.

You say that like it's not ridiculously impressive and interesting.

Could you imagine using something like this for reviewing finish options for a product with zero turnaround time?

It is impressive, but it's not an improvement on the tech in the OP - it's a different approach to a similar problem as far as I can tell.

wow they even added shading, to do fake lighting effects

I hope to see this at the next Tool concert

This is what popped in my head while watching the video!