“Curb Appeal” Virtual Environments Project 4 Spring 2009 Ethan Blackwelder, Siddarth Garg and Shayan Javed
Idea ► Taken from the HGTV show “Curb Appeal”. ► Improve a home’s appearance. ► Landscaping. ► In our project, improve the appearance of the user’s home by adding objects to the front and backyard.
Interface ► Finger/glove tracking using the Wiimote. ► Two points are tracked, to allow the user to select from the menu and place/rotate objects in the scene. ► Nunchuk buttons used for selection. ► Scene navigated using joystick on nunchuk. ► Three buttons: Models, Camera, Trash. ► “Models” brings up menu of all the available models.
Head Tracking ► IR reflective markers for a “Fishtank” view.
Audio ► Menu “clicks”. ► Trash can and camera shutter sounds. ► Selecting models from the scene.
Taking screenshots. ► “Camera” button takes screenshots of current view. ► User can keep a copy of their work by taking as many screenshots as they want from multiple viewpoints.
Display ► 1024 X 768 projected screen. ► Wiimote and IR LED Array below it.
Future Work ► Let user dynamically search for models from Google 3D warehouse. ► Shadows. We added them and it looked very good, but slowed down the whole system. ► Change from day/evening options. ► Placing/editing ground textures. ► Editing/painting the house and porch meshes.
Tools used ► Ogre and some crazy guy’s GUI. ► Google Sketchup (All the models). ► GIMP (For the icons) ► Wiimote/IR LEDs (Thanks to Derek Fairbanks for setting that up).