Through the Interface

Left to My Own Devices: I join the TRXL podcast for episode 152

Some weeks ago I joined Evan Troxel for a couple of hours to chat about my journey and some of the projects I’ve worked on. I’ve enjoyed the TRXL podcast for some time, so it was a real honour to be invited on. Our discussion has just been published as episode 152. If you prefer video, here’s the version from YouTube: Evan’s a great interviewer: I enjoyed the session a great deal and I hope you do, too. Listening back to it I realize there’s a lot more we could have talked about… hopefully Evan will invite me back... Read more →

The Autodesk Reality Solutions SDK and importing custom point clouds into AutoCAD

This isn’t exactly new news, but it was to me. Today I found out we’ve made a very useful component, the Autodesk Reality Solutions SDK, available to the public. This is a C++ library that allows you to read and write Autodesk’s RCP and RCS formats, as well as to create custom plugins for new point cloud definition formats. ADN members can log in today and download the SDK and accompanying samples. Non-members can send an email and get access to it that way. There’s a particular reason I find this to be important news: it will enable developers... Read more →

AR, MoCap and Drones

I’ve had the pleasure of having Cyrille Fauvel from the Forge team with me in Neuchatel, this week. I’ve worked with Cyrille for many years, and we continue to be interested in very similar technology areas (particularly AR/VR, IoT and robotics/UAVs). So we inevitably have lots to talk about. :-) So it’s been a fun-packed few days: on Wednesday we spent the afternoon at Microcity at the Innovation World Cup Conference which was focused primarily on wearable computing and IoT. There were a number of presentations both from established platform providers such as STMicroelectronics and BSH (Bosch) and from... Read more →

REAL 2015 in San Francisco from February 25-27

There’s a really interesting conference in San Francisco, later this month (groan). It’s being held in Fort Mason on February 25-27, and covers all aspects of reality computing, whether relating to capture, compute or create: Autodesk is the main organizer of the event, but there are lots of other companies and institutions involved, too. Check out the list of speakers: there are executives and specialists from Autodesk lined up as well as several eminent names from the industry. Here's a quick video giving a sense of what the conference is all about: And in case you’re still interested in... Read more →

AutoCAD integration samples for Kinect for Windows 2 –Part 4

After introducing the series, taking a look at some basic samples and then looking at importing Kinect’s high-definition face tracking data into AutoCAD, it’s time for (in my opinion) the most interesting piece of functionality provided on the Kinect SDK, Kinect Fusion. Kinect Fusion is a straightforward way to capture 3D volumes – allowing you to move the Kinect sensor around to capture objects from different angles – and the KINFUS command in these integration samples let’s you bring the captured data into AutoCAD. Which basically turns Kinect into a low-cost – and reasonably effective – 3D scanner for... Read more →

AutoCAD integration samples for Kinect for Windows 2 –Part 3

Today’s post looks at face tracking and – to some degree, at least – Kinect Fusion, two more advanced Kinect SDK features that go some way above and beyond the standard samples we saw in the last post. In Kinect for Windows v1, these features belong to an additional “developer toolkit”, although they appear to have been fully integrated into the core Kinect SDK for v2. At least that’s the case in the preview SDK. There are some additional runtime components you’ll need to copy across into AutoCAD’s program files folder to make use of these features: you’ll need... Read more →

AutoCAD integration samples for Kinect for Windows 2 –Part 2

Following on from the introduction to this series – and to the Kinect for Windows v2 sensor – it’s time to take a closer look at some of the AutoCAD integration samples. At the core of the Kinect sensor’s capabilities are really two things: the ability to capture depth data and to detect people’s bodies in the field of view. There are additional bells and whistles such as audio support, Kinect Fusion and face tracking, but the foundation is really about RGB-D input and the additional runtime analysis required to track humans. Let’s take a look at both of... Read more →

AutoCAD integration samples for Kinect for Windows 2 –Part 1

Last Friday Microsoft announced a preview SDK for Kinect for Windows 2. As the first public release of the SDK, it seems a good time to publish an initial set of samples for readers to play with. These are very much a work in progress – I tend to restart AutoCAD between Kinect Fusion captures, for instance, as otherwise I’ve been getting regular crashes – but they should give people a sense of what’s possible. And while I haven’t yet implemented certain capabilities we had before, I have gone ahead and snuck a few enhancements in (which you’ll see... Read more →

Kinect Fusion for Kinect for Windows 2

A few weeks ago I received the official retail version of Kinect for Windows 2 (having signed up for the pre-release program I had the right to two sensors: the initial developer version and the final retail version). After some initial integration work to get the AutoCAD-Kinect samples working with the pre-release Kinect SDK, I hadn’t spent time looking at it in the meantime: the main reason being that I was waiting for Kinect Fusion to be part of the SDK. The good (actually, great) news is that it’s now there and it’s working really well. For those of... Read more →

Leaving Israel

It’s been a really interesting and productive few days here in Tel Aviv. In a sense it was too short a trip – I was penned in by commitments during the weekends either side of it – but despite that a lot was achieved. I didn’t get to see very much of the city – apart from the hotel, a restaurant, some nice lunchtime eateries and a bar or two – but I’ll definitely try to come for longer, next time around. After arriving on Tuesday and meeting with the people I’d be working most closely with during the... Read more →

AU 2013 classes available on-demand

Yesterday I was reminded that 200 sessions from Autodesk University 2013 were recorded and have been made available on-demand – for free! Many great classes are available as well as the keynote and innovation forum sessions. I believe you need to create a free Autodesk account to view them, if you don’t already happen to have one. In fact, here’s a screengrab from the closing keynote which happens to include a photo (taken by Shaan Hurley, of course) of me with Scott McFarlane (love the sweatshirt :-) and Owen Wengerd at the Blogger’s Social. I did a quick search... Read more →

Merry Christmas!

During the general wind-down before Autodesk’s annual “week of rest”, I’ve been spending some time this week getting more of my AutoCAD-Kinect integration samples working with the pre-release Kinect for Windows 2.0 device and SDK. Things are actually working pretty well: all samples – barring those that rely on capabilities that aren’t yet part of the SDK – are functional and some have even been enhanced based on new capabilities of the 2.0 device. For instance, I’ve reworked the “piping” sample (the one that extrudes a circular profile through 3D space) to make use of the distance between the... Read more →

Local presentations and musings on AR/VR

I’ve been sick in bed since returning from AU2013 – the fever I experienced on Thursday morning, before travelling home in the evening, was apparently due to bacterial bronchitis, and I’ve been coughing really badly over the last few days. At least the fever has passed, but I did have to cancel my plans to travel to the Munich DevDay. It would have just been too much for me to be on a series of trains for a total of 7 hours each way. Next year. Anyway, here’s a quick post I’ve had sitting around that I’ve just augmented... Read more →

My week at AU 2013

I’m sitting in Heathrow Terminal 5, waiting for my connecting flight to Geneva. A good time to reflect back on another intense week at Autodesk University. I arrived in Las Vegas for this year’s AU last Saturday evening, flying via the UK on a flight that seemed full with AU attendees (even if Autodesk employees were limited to 20 per flight). Among others I bumped into Tilo Pfliegner from kubit and the CAD Professor himself, Sunith Babu. I’ve really found that having the extra day in Las Vegas – which I usually spend shopping for the family and hanging... Read more →

First impressions of Kinect for Windows 2.0 pre-release

I was hoping to get the Kinect for Windows 2.0 pre-release developer kit in time for AU – so I can talk about it intelligently, even if I don’t end up demoing it – so when the UPS delivery man showed up, yesterday, I was very happy. As always, it started with a simple box: Which, once opened, revealed some nice monochrome graphics: And the device itself, of course (tripod is model’s own ;-). The addition of the tripod screw-hole on the bottom is very welcome: I ended up buying a somewhat flimsy and unstable 3rd party tripod for... Read more →

Scanning the Fountain of Justice using Kinect Fusion and AutoCAD

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, on Monday I spent a few hours in the early morning at the local archeological museum, the Laténium. While this is nowhere near the scale of the Smithsonian, it is the largest archeological museum in Switzerland and is well known by people in the field, especially those interested in La Tène culture. I love the Laténium – our kids often seem to go there for birthday parties, which certainly beat the ones held at the local McDonalds – and so I was delighted to get to go “behind closed doors” (the museum is closed... Read more →

AU Online LIVE: session on Kinect Fusion and AutoCAD

For those of you unable to attend AU 2013 in person, the keynote sessions and a small number of this year’s classes will be streamed live. And they’re free to attend: you just need to be registered with AU Online. I’m lucky to be presenting one of only 11 classes that are scheduled to be broadcast over the web as well as having a live audience: it seems my Kinect Fusion session is the only developer-centric class that’s been selected for this year’s AU Online, which is quite the honour. Hopefully I’ll do it justice! A good piece of... Read more →

Leap Motion, Kinect Fusion, SensorTag

Yesterday I presented a condensed sneak peek of my upcoming AU sessions on Kinect Fusion and Leap Motion to colleagues in the Neuchâtel office (I’ll do the same at our office in Gümligen next week). It was good to make sure my various demos are working well in time for AU, as well as creating some awareness around the possibilities presented by these two technologies. We attempted a live capture of a chair using Kinect Fusion, which actually came out surprisingly well (the Kinect’s USB cable popped out as I was trying to scan the chair’s back, but the... Read more →

Kinect Fusion: comparing approaches for point cloud generation inside AutoCAD

Something you realise quite early on when working with the Kinect Fusion component in the Microsoft Kinect SDK is that it’s really meant to integrate into a 2D UI: it takes care of rendering the volume that’s being mapped, and you simply have to integrate the generated bitmap somewhere into your app’s UI. The primary benefit of this approach is its low latency: it all happens very quickly and the only data you need to move from the runtime into your app is the bitmap itself. With 3D systems such as AutoCAD, though, you really want to take the... Read more →

Kinect Fusion updated to include colour

A few weeks ago the Kinect SDK was updated to version 1.8. I’d been eagerly awaiting this update for one reason, in particular: aside from receiving some updates to provide more robust tracking – something that was very much needed – Kinect Fusion has now been updated to include realistic colours in the output. There are some additional SDK enhancements, such as a background removal APIs (good for greenscreening) and HTML support (handy for interactive kiosks), but the ones that interest me most relate to Kinect Fusion. There are a few new Kinect Fusion samples that I need to... Read more →